Nolan's Ark
Date: 2019-12-12 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Post Apocalyptic; Dystopia
Description: They betrayed him. They left him for dead.And…They killed his dog.A shocking aerial attack hits the major cities of America.On the same night, Butch Nolan wakes up in a Hollywood parking lot to find his dog Diesel lying dead beside him.Nolan, star of the post-apocalyptic TV show Goliath, and former UFC heavyweight champion, knows he doesn’t have much time to find those responsible. The bombs are falling and America is on the brink of collapse.But justice must be served.An enraged Nolan climbs into Goliath, a spectacular Monster Bus-Tank and sets off to find and punish the dog killer.He wants r
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services

Nolan’s Ark

Armageddon Times #1

Mark Gillespie

This is a work of speculative fiction. All of the events and dialogue depicted within are a product of the author’s overactive imagination. None of this stuff happened. Except maybe in a parallel universe.

Copyright © 2019 by Mark Gillespie
www.markgillespieauthor.com

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

First Printing: December 2019

Cover by Vincent Sammy

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Contents

Quote

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

The End

After the End

After the End Trilogy

The Future of London (Books 1-5)

The Future of London

Exterminators Cover

The Exterminators Trilogy

Dystopiaville

GrimLog (Tales of Terror)

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Website/Social Media

Quote

‘Dogs have a way of finding the people who need them.’

Thom Jones

Chapter 1

Butch Nolan woke up with the taste of blood in his mouth.

He was lying belly down on a warm, hard surface. Outside – he was outside somewhere.

When he lifted his head it felt to Nolan like he was riding around on a twisted merry-go-round, spinning endless circles at a hundred miles per hour. If that wasn’t bad enough he was also staring out at a blurry world that appeared to be on fire.

He spat blood onto the concrete. It formed a shallow purplish-black puddle in the darkness. Looked more like oil than blood.

“Diesel? Where are you boy?”

With a groan, Nolan pushed himself off the ground, moving with all the grace of a drugged animal. As he wobbled, he took in the scenery – the open space, wide iron gates, several rows of fancy-looking cars tucked in at the edges.

Cars…

Of course. He was in the parking lot at Paramount Studios. It was the big lot at the back where they’d held the party where Nolan and some of the other cast members of Goliath had been showing off the Monster Bus-Tanks to the visiting politicians. Jesus. It was cringeworthy but Nolan had promised Sam Taylor, the show’s long-term producer, that he’d make an appearance for the sake of the cameras at least. Nolan would much rather have stayed at home with a cold beer but he turned up for Sam, planning to stay no longer than a couple of hours. Max.

The journalists had hovered in the background, snapping hundreds, thousands of photos – click, click, click – a fucking showcase for the…

“Oh shit,” Nolan said.

The attack.

The fucking attack had brought everything to a halt. That explained it – that explained why the city appeared to be on fire.

It was on fire.

Nolan licked the blood off his lips. At the same time, he recalled the screaming and the firebombs painting the horizon alight with a terror show of hot, dancing colors. Fighter planes racing through the night sky. Clouds of dust and smoke had smothered the colors, casting a pall of darkness over the city.

Where had all those jets come from?

“DIESEL!”

Nolan tried to get up but the dizziness wasn’t done with him yet. What the hell…?

He glanced skyward, watching as plumes of black smoke spiraled towards the clouds. Distant fires crackled and sounded much closer than they were. Nolan’s nostrils twitched as a gust of foul, chemical-enhanced air rammed its way down his throat and choked his insides.

They were still screaming out there on the street. The screams were so frequent that it was almost becoming normal, like the sound of birdsong on a spring morning.

There was a constant banging noise, which sounded like cascading debris hitting the street nearby.

“What is this?” Nolan asked.

How had the world gone from a dull, showbiz party to hell on earth?

The parking lot, which had been crammed with tables and chairs, catering stands, a variety of TV props, not to mention a shitload of people, was almost empty except for the staff cars that lined the edges. And some of them were gone too. Glancing over his shoulder, Nolan saw that two of the Monster Bus-Tanks, Kong and Jaws, were gone. Goliath – the biggest of all the MBTs and the show’s flagship vehicle – was still there, parked in the same spot beside the back wall.

“Diesel? Come here boy.”

It felt like the devil was tap-dancing inside Nolan’s skull.

“Where are you?”

Nolan’s eyes landed on a dark shape lying in the center of the parking lot. A black puddle surrounded this lumpy shape, giving the appearance of something big submerged in a shallow pool of oily liquid.

“No!”

Nolan managed to climb to his feet, staggering across the parking lot like the zombies in his TV show. He stopped beside the dark shape. All he could hear now was the sound of his rapid-fire breathing. The sound of Hollywood burning had fizzled to silence.

Nolan picked the dead dog off the ground. Diesel was heavy but Nolan had carried him hundreds of times before and he’d carry him now too. The dog’s limpness, the way his shiny black legs dangled lifelessly in midair was worse than a knife to the heart.

He stood there, his face buried deep in Diesel’s cold, damp coat.

When Nolan finally lifted his head the fog had cleared.

He remembered everything. He remembered who was responsible for this.

Chapter 2

Axel Jones and his friends hurried along Santa Monica Boulevard as the bombs fell from the sky.

The lights in Hollywood went on and off with every explosion, as if someone was messing around with the universal circuit breaker. Light then dark, then light. It was both dizzying and disorientating.

Twelve-year-old Axel ran at the head of the quartet, his long, spindly legs putting him easily out front. Everyone always said that Axel would make a fine sprinter and that if they ever made a movie of Usain Bolt’s life, Axel was just the kid to portray the Olympic legend as a gangly youngster. But it was mostly white kids who said that – the sort of white kids who thought that all black kids looked the same.

Still, he was a damn good runner.

Axel steered his friends through the maze of despair that was Hollywood. The streets were jam-packed, spilling over with hordes of frightened people trying to make their way to safety. It was a nightmare scenario. Axel and the others pushed their way through a giant carnival of terror. The noise was ceaseless – hundreds and thousands of voices converging into one dissonant minor chord wail. Families had to work extra hard to stay together. Fathers and mothers grasped their children tight, some of them praying out loud as they ran.

People joined forces for the most part, encouraging a spirit of cooperation that rejected the temptation of anarchy. But that temptation, which reached out to some of the poor and disenfranchised in La La Land, as well as the criminals and opportunists, had its takers too.

The looters were hard at work, taking advantage of a noticeable police absence to bulldoze their way into unmanned stores. Didn’t matter what the stores sold, be it sporting goods, electronics, groceries or whatever, this attack was a golden ticket, a chance to shop for free. So while others ran for their lives the looters pushed shopping carts along the street, protecting their haul from those who would rob thieves.

Some people hid behind masks. Most didn’t.

Axel slowed down so his friends could catch up with him. As he waited he saw a fat white woman running out of a burning storefront with a brand new Dyson in her hand. She was wielding the box over her head with superhuman strength like it was toy.

“FRANKIE!” she yelled. “FRANKIE I GOT ONE BABY!”

Thirteen-year-old Kasey Hunter caught up with Axel first. She was breathing heavily, sweat dripping down her face. Her long red hair complimented the scorched backdrop.

The other two boys in the gang, Lars Murphy and Charlie Roth, caught up with their friends a few seconds later. They were twelve and fourteen respectively. Lars was a videogame fanatic, a short tubby kid whose idea of a strenuous workout was reaching for a donut during Call of Duty. Running through the streets tonight had – so far at least – come closer to killing Lars than the bombs falling from the sky.

Charlie was stick thin – a highly intelligent but frail boy who’d been permanently sick as a young child. Books had been Charlie’s childhood friends, his bedside companions, and while his body had failed his mind had soared through the pages, soaking up crystalized wisdom and the imaginative worlds of others. Charlie was a straight A student, but one that still managed to be likeable to the average kid. That was no mean feat.

Axel adjusted the blue and white Dodgers cap on his head. There was a malevolent breeze drifting across the city and it wanted that hat.

“You taste that?” he said. “The frigging air’s contaminated or something.”

“Rancid,” Kasey said, putting her shirtsleeve over her nose and mouth. She stared wide-eyed up at the sky. “I think those jets that hit us are moving away. Axel? What do you think?”

Axel shrugged. Like everyone else, Kasey wanted the reassurance that it was over.

“Maybe,” he said. It was all he could say.

The aerial bombardment did appear to be traveling southeast. Staying on that course would take it towards Downtown LA. Looking up, Axel saw a pack of fighter jets racing through a red sky, tiny black specks that glowed under the spectacular wreckage of Hollywood.

Kasey coughed into the back of her hand.

“C’mon guys,” she said. “A lot of people are going to Melrose, to Paramount. That’s what I’m hearing anyway. It’s not that far and there’s gotta be help over there doncha think? Considering who was there tonight.”

Charlie nodded. “They must have hit here first because they knew he was here. Has to be.”

“Who’s they?” Lars said. “Who are we talking about? Who’s doing this to us?”

“Never mind that now Lars,” Kasey said. “Let’s just deal with the facts we know. We can’t go home, none of us. Everything around Oakwood is toast, we know that much from what we saw and what others told us who were on their way outta there. We also know that the President was at the Paramount Party tonight, which means there’s gotta be some kind of police or security down there. Right? Well if that’s true, that’s where we need to go.”

Charlie scowled at Kasey. “Oakwood is not toast. Don’t say that Kasey. My mom is…”

He stopped, gasping for breath.

“She’s…alive.”

Axel gave his friend a pat on the back. “I’m sorry man.”

And yet Axel’s mom was in Oakwood too. Why didn’t he give a shit like Charlie gave a shit about his old lady? Axel figured his mom was too drunk to even notice the attack. When the bombs hit she probably thought that someone in the nearby apartments had turned their TV up too loud. The attack did sound like a war movie, no doubt about that. Or maybe she was sleeping on the couch and never knew what hit her.

He clenched both fists tight. Took another hit of that stinking hot air.

Kasey’s situation at home wasn’t much better. She had a junkie mom and brother who were both barely half-alive. She hadn’t mentioned them once since the attack, at least not yet. Axel figured she had to be thinking about them, right?

The truth was however, that only Charlie and Lars had families worth grieving over.

Someone bolted past the gang. A man with a shaved head and goatee was running down the street in a chaotic zigzag pattern. Pushing his way past people. Starting, stopping, starting and stopping all over again. He was naked except for a pair of white underpants.

The man stared up at the sky, holding up the sign of the cross. Even though he was as ripped as a bodybuilder and could have easily passed for a Marvel superhero, he made a whimpering noise, like a frightened child fleeing the closet monster.

“I can’t take much more of this,” Lars said, bug-eyed with fear. He was watching the man’s spiral into madness, unable to look away. “I can’t…”

“Let’s go,” Axel said, clapping his hands together. “Gotta keep moving. Gotta keep running.”

They ran.

Most of the streetlights on Santa Monica Boulevard had been snuffed out like candles in the rain. A few flickered here and there but it was the burning buildings that provided most of the night-light over Hollywood.

“How…could this…happen to us?” Lars gasped, spitting out words as he ran.

The world had turned into one of Lars’s beloved video games. Here it was in three-dimensional reality and with extra sharp teeth. Unfortunately this particular game – Run from the Death Planes – was a game that couldn’t be switched off when mom called you down to dinner.

“This is America,” Lars said. “How…can they just attack us…out of nowhere?”

Axel had one hand on his baseball cap as he ran.

“Because our President’s an asshole,” he yelled. “Worst ever. No wonder they want to impeach his ass.”

But Lars wasn’t listening.

“This is America man,” he said. “We’re not some backwater swamp country in the asshole of Asia. You can’t just sneak up on us. Not us.”

“Shut up Lars!” Kasey yelled. “Holy shit man. Shut up or I’m going to punch you I swear to God.”

An explosion shook the ground under their feet. The blast happened somewhere in between Hollywood and Downtown LA.

“Oh shit!” Charlie screamed.

“Keep running!” Kasey yelled.

Axel spun around for a second, watching the sky light up as if the world’s biggest fireworks display was taking place tonight. That last explosion had happened in the vicinity of his beloved Dodgers Stadium. His heart sank. Dodgers Stadium always made him think of his dad and their trips to see the baseball, at least once a month back in the good old days. Thank God the old man wasn’t around to see this. It would break his heart to see Dodgers Stadium reduced to a pile of smoking rubble, which surely it just had been.

Lars’s eyes ballooned with terror. “Where’s the police?” he wailed. “Where’s the army? Why is no one stopping this?”

Charlie’s face was strangely calm.

“They’re gone,” he said in between wheezy breaths. “At worst, obliterated. At best, scattered and in chaos. This thing, it’s HUGE Lars. My guess – they went after military and law enforcement targets and everything after that is a bonus. Besides, with no law and order, they’ll leave us to destroy ourselves. Look at all the people we’ve seen looting already.”

“You’re a real ray of sunshine,” Kasey said, glaring at Charlie. “I hope I never get trapped in an elevator with you.”

Charlie shrugged. “You heard any sirens tonight Kasey? See any soldiers? Any ambulances?”

Kasey didn’t answer.

Axel was convinced he could smell the scent of burning flesh in the air. Worse than that, he could taste it. He wanted to double over and throw up. But to go down with all these people running around the streets, it was suicide. Death by stampede was a real possibility tonight.

“Melrose Avenue,” Kasey said, leading the sprint now. She pumped her arms and legs like a pro. “Right? We’re going to make it guys.”

Axel nodded. “Right.”

About a minute later, Lars pulled up, a hand pressed tight against his side. His head looked like it was about to pop.

“I don’t know how much more I can run,” he gasped. “I feel…feel like my heart’s going to explode.”

Kasey skidded the heels of her sneakers to a stop on the sidewalk. She turned around, her face glowing like she’d been scrubbing it for days. She walked back over to Lars, loosening the collar of her Adidas hoodie, wafting both sides like a fan.

“I got an idea,” she said. “Might cut some time off the journey.”

Lars shook his head. “I can’t run Kasey. I just can’t.”

“Yes you can.”

“I can’t.”

“What if we cut through Hollywood Forever?” Kasey said, directing the question to Axel more than Lars. There was a hopeful look on her face, which seemed at odds with the dire circumstances that surrounded them. “That’ll shave time off won’t it?”

“Shortcut?” Charlie said.

“Yeah,” Axel said. “It’s a shortcut alright. If we go through Hollywood Forever I reckon we’ll come out on Melrose. Or as near as dammit. That right Charlie?”

Charlie thought it over for a second. His mouth was moving, mumbling silent syllables.

“Yeah.”

“Hollywood Forever?” Lars said, his bottom lip trembling. “But that’s a cemetery and it’s dark out. Are you guys crazy?”

“No safer place to be tonight than a cemetery,” Axel said. “Who’s gonna bomb a bunch of dead people?”

Lars shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

“C’mon Lars,” Kasey said. “Grow a pair.”

“Maybe going to Paramount isn’t such a good idea after all,” Lars said, ignoring Kasey’s jibe. “Everyone knows about that charity thing with the President and that other woman. What’s her name again? The one that looks like a bearded dragon in a dress.”

“Jezebeth Black,” Charlie said. “And that bearded dragon in a dress just happens to be the leader of the main opposition party.”

“My point,” Lars said, eye-growling at Charlie, “is that if all those important people were at the party, they’re all up in smoke by now. All burned up and shit. It’s like Charlie said – those jets had to be going after the Prez. They had to be. In that case, what the hell are we going to Paramount for? It’s a graveyard.”

“We don’t know anything Lars,” Kasey snapped. “We don’t have a clue. Do you see any smoke rising above Melrose? I don’t. Would you rather go back to Oakwood? It’s like I said – we know for sure that place has gone up in smoke and that anyone who was there is…”

“Easy Kasey,” Axel said.

“Don’t say it!” Lars said, stabbing a finger up at the girl who was at least three inches taller than he was. “Just because you don’t give a shit about your junkie family. Fuck you Kasey!”

Kasey’s body went stiff.

“Alright now children,” Axel said, glancing back and forth between the combatants. An angry, scalding heat wafted into his face from both sides.

“We’re family,” he said in a calm voice. “The four of us. Remember? Right now we’ve only got each other to lean on and that makes fighting amongst ourselves kinda stupid. Right Charlie?”

Charlie nodded.

“The President is down there,” Axel said. “And maybe there’s some police or army or Secret Service people too and if so that’s where we need to be right now. We need help if we’re going to make it through the night.”

“Shortcut then?” Kasey asked, unclenching her fists. She stepped backwards, away from Lars. “We go through the cemetery, right?”

“Right,” Axel said. “Lars?”

“Yeah whatever.”

Lars grumbled some more but he followed the others as they cut off Santa Monica Boulevard. They rushed towards a block of retail stores squeezed under a pink, low-roofed building that screamed cheap. Everything was here – a DIY store, a Laundromat, pet supplies, a filthy, rundown liquor store and a whole lot more besides.

Kasey peered through the window of a travel agent. Then she tried the door handle.

“Shit,” she said, finding it locked. “Hollywood Forever’s directly at the back of this building. We need to get through somehow.”

“Everything closed at five,” Axel said, glancing around the storefront. “Or…maybe not. What about the liquor store?”

“Good call,” Kasey said, slapping him on the back.

They hurried twenty feet to the left and tried the door of Donny’s KO Liquor. The door was open. They ran inside, huddled close together like a four-headed monster trying to slip through the night unseen. Donny’s store hadn’t been ransacked by looters. Not yet.

The looters would come though, as sure as sunrise.

It was dark inside and it sounded like there was a radio playing hip-hop nearby. Axel peered left and right as they passed the checkout, dreading the sound of angry footsteps rushing down the aisle towards them. Was Donny here? And if so was he alive and if he was alive, what would he do to four intruders sneaking around his place of work? Axel didn’t want to find out – as the sole black kid in the gang he always took the brunt of the blame.

They crept past an office at the back, which led them down a hallway towards the back door. The door was bolted shut but as far as Axel could see, it was no more than a simple slide bolt without a padlock. Axel pulled the bolt back and slowly opened the door, trying to keep as quiet as possible.

The door shrieked like it was raising an alarm.

“C’mon,” he whispered to the others. “Quick.”

They hurried down a concrete yard flanked by the dark silhouette of garbage bins, wooden crates and metal barrels. At the end of the yard they found themselves standing in front of a giant hedge, which was ten feet tall at least. This hedge was the last barrier between themselves and Hollywood Forever.

Lars stared at the hedge like it was Godzilla.

“Oh fuck,” he said.

“What’s wrong?” Charlie said. “It’s just a hedge.”

Lars blinked like there was something in his eye. “Just a…”

Something exploded in the distance. Shards of orange-red appeared in the corner of the night sky. The kids fell silent for a few moments, waiting to see if there was a follow up blast.

When nothing happened, Lars pointed a stumpy finger at the hedge.

“I ain’t getting over that,” he said. “No way guys.”

Axel and Kasey weren’t listening. They were already scouring the hedge, searching for a way in from the bottom. Lars was right – it was too big to climb over but that didn’t mean there wasn’t another option on ground level. An entrance, a hole – a simple access point that would take them into the cemetery.

There was nothing. Axel, who’d split up from Kasey to search further along the hedge, couldn’t see a way in and he was already thinking about the return leg through spooky Donny’s when she called out to him.

“Here,” Kasey said, sounding as excited as someone who’d found buried treasure in the back yard. “There’s a gap at the bottom. I think we can wriggle through it okay. Wait, let me see…”

As Axel ran over she was clawing at the hedge with one hand, pushing her way towards the base. Kasey’s other hand gripped her phone, which she was using as a flashlight. The crisp yellowy light landed on the lower branches, giving off a sinister Brothers Grimm vibe, as if the branches were alien limbs reaching for Kasey. A second later the top half of her body disappeared as if the hedge was swallowing her whole.

“What the hell?” Axel said. “That looks painful.”

“There’s a decent-sized gap at the bottom,” she said. “Looks like a little path through the branches. Easy to squeeze through if we’re careful.”

Axel touched the visor of his cap. “Ummm, even for Lars?”

“I can hear you,” Lars called over. “Fat doesn’t mean deaf you know.”

Kasey disappeared through the other side, slipping into the cemetery. She let slip several shrieks of pain.

“You alright?” Axel asked, crouching down for a closer look. He could only hear a faint rustling sound on the other side. “You in?”

“I’m in,” Kasey said. “That was a bit rough but what the hell right? This is our shortcut. C’mon, I’ll keep the flashlight on for you guys.”

“Coming,” Axel said.

Axel dropped to his knees. He ducked his head down, flopped onto his elbows and worked his way through the dirt, following the light on Kasey’s phone. Even with a cap on his head the branches still managed to scrape at his face, raking their tips down his skin.

“Shit,” he said. “Damn thing’s trying to take my eye out.”

“Hurry up,” Kasey said.

Axel slipped through the last of the hedge and wriggled into Hollywood Forever, cemetery to the stars. Kasey helped him up, rubbing the dirt off his clothes.

“Let’s go,” Axel said, addressing Lars and Charlie on the other side. He sounded like an overeager soccer coach. “Move, move, move.”

Charlie had no problem getting through the hedge. The kid was like the liquid Terminator. He could have puffed his entire body out and still it would have been a cinch. Lars on the other hand, suffered every inch of the way but to his credit he sucked his belly in and said what the hell. In the end he picked up little more than a shallow cut on his cheek.

The others helped him back to his feet.

“Piece of cake,” Lars said, wiping his face down.

As his friends dusted him down, Lars stared in horror over their shoulders. This was his first glimpse at the headstones in the distance.

“Oh shit,” Lars whispered, as if the dead might overhear their conversation. “That’s a lot of dead people we’ve got to run over.”

He tapped Charlie on the arm.

“Are you sure Melrose is on the other side of this?”

“Yeah,” Charlie said with an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry Lars, it’ll be worth it. After this we’re going to find people who can help us. Maybe…take us to our parents, you know?”

Lars was still gawping at the headstones.

Kasey shrugged. She looked over at Hollywood Forever’s tombstone landscape as if it was a regular street crossing.

“I’d rather be in here with the old stiffs than out there with the fresh ones,” she said.

Lars dabbed at the scratch he’d picked up crawling through the hedge. It was nothing – a red worm stitched to the side of his face.

“We can do this guys,” Charlie said. “Help’s on the other side of this cemetery.”

Axel tilted the Dodgers cap back, clearing his line of vision. He didn’t want to trip over anything in here. Or anyone.

They started walking at a brisk yet cautious pace. The three boys also brought out their phones to use as flashlights.

“Hey isn’t Rudolph Valentino buried in here somewhere?” Lars asked.

“What are you talking about?” Axel asked.

“He’s like a film star from hundreds of years ago,” Lars said. “My mom’s got this framed photo of him in the house somewhere. I think my granddad gave it to her. The chicks dug him – Valentino, not my gramps. I heard they flipped their gourds when he died. Jesus, what if I trample over his grave?”

Kasey kept her eyes out front. She bounded her way forward, easily the least cautious member of the group.

“Lars my friend,” she said. “You’ll trample over every dead movie star in Hollywood if it means getting your ass to safety. Right?”

“I guess so.”

“Good. Now shut up and walk.”

Axel took in the sights as they crossed over a never-ending lawn of flat, barely visible tombstones. Palm trees stood tall and silent up ahead, like guardians of the dead. The kids had sneakers on and yet as they trekked forward, it sounded like a herd of elephants running loose inside the cemetery.

They stepped off the lawn, emerging onto a long and winding concrete path that led them past a series of crypts, each one more ominous looking than the others. Crooked silhouettes stood up on the roofs as if someone…something was lurking there watching the young travelers as they passed by. But it was merely the architecture – that’s what Axel told himself anyway.

Despite everything happening elsewhere it was oddly peaceful inside the cemetery. As they walked it felt like they were the last four people in the world. It wasn’t a bad feeling at all.

At the cemetery perimeter they climbed a short wall and jumped down onto North Van Ness Avenue. After a moment’s deliberation, Charlie led the group south towards what they hoped was Melrose Avenue.

There was no smoke. The air was surprisingly clear and as Axel and his friends reached the turn onto Melrose Avenue, other people could be seen, all of them marching in the same direction.

Axel and his friends merged with the crowd, approaching the famous double arched gates of Paramount.

As they got closer they saw about two hundred people gathered outside the gates. That number was growing by the second. Axel and his friends were swept up with the new arrivals, a human convoy traveling east to west along Melrose.

Things were getting rowdy.

People pushed and waved their hands in the air. They hollered to be let inside the grounds but there was a black-suited wall of government personnel standing a few feet behind the arches. Secret Service, Axel thought. They were packing guns, lots of guns – handguns, semi-automatic rifles and God knows what else that could take a person’s head off. Axel thought he recognized an AK-47 in the hands of one man.

“Holy shit,” he said.

There were cops too, not many but the few that were still visible were all gathered at Paramount. Either they were there to help the President or maybe they were trying to source military help for their battered forces.

Didn’t seem to Axel like anybody knew what they were doing. LAPD was in deep shit, just like everything else. The army? Christ knows where they were. Probably getting their asses kicked by a clearly superior, better prepared invading force.

“It’s a mess,” he said.

“Hey at least the Prez is alive,” Lars said. There was a smile on his face like he was celebrating a great victory. “That’s what I call a major setback for the other side don’t you?”

Axel shook his head.

“He’s a lucky son of a bitch,” Kasey said. She sounded disappointed, like she’d lost money on a bet.

“LET US IN!” someone yelled near the gate. “HELP US FOR GOD’S SAKE!”

The security wall came forward, separate parts of a greater whole working in harmony. They trained their guns on the advancing mob.

“BACK,” one of the men in black yelled. “Get back.”

Restraining the crowd was one thing, silencing them was another. More and more people were showing up outside the studios, some begging for help, others demanding it. All the madness of the night had gathered in one location. Not that people didn’t have a reason to be pissed off – their homes were burning. Many of them had lost loved ones. And now, caught in the grip of a senseless situation they wanted their political leaders to show themselves and shed light on why their local neighborhood resembled CNN footage of a warzone in the Middle East.

“Let us in!” someone screamed.

“Where is he?”

“Where’s that useless sack of shit?””

“Where’s Jezebeth Black?”

Axel and his friends found themselves being pushed closer to the gate. It was impossible to resist the momentum.

The night air was clammy and suffocating. On more than one occasion, Axel had a dizzy turn, convinced that he was going to faint. Fortunately he managed to stay upright and clear his head. Going down would be a bad idea. God knows if he’d get back up again, despite the best efforts of his friends.

The standoff between crowd and security went on for another ten minutes with little change. Distant explosions interrupted the proceedings, the interruptions growing shorter and less significant with each new bomb. It was as if people were getting used to things blowing up in LA.

“We should get out of here,” Axel said. “I have a bad feeling…”

“And go where?” Charlie asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Hollywood Forever? We can sit it out, come up with Plan B. What do you think Kasey?”

Kasey was about to speak when a roaring noise at her back cut her off. It was such a remarkable and close sound that even the angriest protesters were jolted into a sudden silence.

Everyone turned around.

A pair of large headlights on the road came closer. To stare at these lights was like catching the eye of a Titan-like monster with a fierce, dazzling stare. Even the blackness that threatened to devour Hollywood was momentarily squashed in it presence.

The light approached the double arched gates.

Some people screamed. Others began to push their way through the impenetrable crowd in a bid to run away.

“Tanks!” they yelled. “They’re coming for us.”

Axel’s heart was thumping. He grabbed Kasey’s arm but it was an impotent gesture – they had no chance of making a sudden getaway from Paramount. They, along with Lars and Charlie, were too deep inside the crowd. They were trapped.

A second pair of headlights appeared behind the first vehicle. Both machines snarled in unison as they roamed down Melrose, a pair of large predators closing in on their prey.

Axel wasn’t sure if the road was shaking or it was just his legs.

Lars, usually the first to panic, was surprisingly calm. When he smiled at the incoming monsters, Axel began to think he was dreaming. Or that his friend had gone legitimately mad. Surely Lars wasn’t relieved to see the enemy closing in? God knows what awaited all American citizens as these foreign invaders rode into Hollywood on their tanks and trucks, foreign flags flapping in the breeze, devil grins gloating over the destruction of the nation.

“Lars?” Axel said. “What the fuck man?”

But Lars was still smiling.

“Don’t you see?” he said. “I see.”

And a moment later, so did everyone else.

“Holeeeeeeeee shit!” Axel screamed, peering through a gap in between the crowd. Before he knew it he was laughing and jumping up and down, throwing his arms around Kasey, Lars and Charlie. A weight had fallen from his shoulders. The nightmare was far from over of course, but this was the morale boost they needed.

It was a break. A goddamn break, at long last.

“We’re going to be alright,” Axel told his friends. “ Look you guys. The cavalry’s arrived.”

Chapter 3

The Monster Bus-Tanks, known as MBTs, were about twenty-five feet tall. Give or take. They were wider than a regular bus with chromium plated exteriors and protruding steel-grille bumpers, which made them look like transport from a harsh and unforgiving, desert-landscape future. Sharp machete-like spears stood out at the front, nicely complimenting the vicious bumper-teeth.

The first MBT driving down Melrose Avenue was blood red in color. The one at its tail was dark blue, the shade of a deep pool of water.

Black machine gun barrels, every bit as flexible as human limbs, jutted out from either side of both Monster Bus-Tanks.

“Jaws and Kong,” Kasey said, grinning. “They’re here to help us.”

“Thank God,” Charlie said, groaning with relief. “But who’s in them?”

This sudden change in mood, from despair to joy, was jarring. It was also infectious, spreading across the crowd instantly. The crowd knew the MBTs, knew that their appearance on Melrose had nothing to do with the invaders. Jaws and Kong were two of three MBTs featured in Paramount’s biggest TV show, Goliath, which was currently in its fifth season and still going strong. Goliath followed the adventures of hard-bitten loner, Chuck Kowalski, played by actor and former UFC heavyweight champion Butch Nolan. Kowalski, along with several other characters in the show, lived in a zombie-ridden, post-apocalyptic America, driving around the barren wasteland in the MBTs, searching for a cure for the manmade disease that gave rise to the plague of undead.

It was Axel’s favorite show. It was everyone’s favorite show, at least according to the ratings. The sight of the MBTs on Melrose was up there with seeing the gods descend from Mount Olympus. This was what everyone needed – a reminder that America wasn’t done yet.

Jaws slowed to a stop a short distance from the Paramount gate. There was a loud, satisfying hiss as the air brakes released pressure. On both sides of the vehicle, directly underneath the gun barrels, the word ‘JAWS’ was printed in huge silvery-white print.

Kong pulled up beside Jaws. Both MBTs, parked side by side, swallowed up the entirety of the road.

The crowd chanted a welcome greeting.

“USA! USA! USA!”

“Where’s Goliath?” Lars asked, struggling to make his voice heard over the racket. “Where’s the big one? Axel?”

Axel shrugged, unable to tear his eyes away from the MBTs. Jesus, two MBTs parked right in front of him like that. It was wild! Living in Hollywood had dulled Axel’s sense of wonder, especially when it came to catching the occasional glimpse of a movie star through a restaurant window or stepping out of a car. That was the way it should be. There was nothing special about actors, not really. What did they do anyway? Put on makeup and pretend to be someone else. In a parallel universe, that sort of behavior would get you locked up. In Tinseltown, they made you a god for it.

“I don’t know where Goliath is Lars,” Axel said. “But two out of three ain’t bad, right?”

“What are those banners hanging off the side?” Charlie asked. “You guys see that?”

Axel saw it.

Several cloth-like banners flapped gently on the underside of the windows of both MBTs. It looked like somebody’s laundry had been left out to dry in the suffocating post-attack breeze.

Axel peered in that direction, trying to make out what was written on the banners. The words, printed in bold capitals, basked in the combined glow of the flickering streetlights and the MBT headlights.

On the side of Jaws: ‘VOTE RAGE!’

On the side of Kong: ‘VOTE BLACK!’

“Huh?” Axel said, tipping his cap upwards. “Am I reading that right?”

“I don’t remember seeing that in the TV show,” Kasey said. “Do you?”

Axel shook his head. “Uh-uh.”

Another hissing noise from one of the MBTs. At this, the crowd murmured in excited anticipation.

“Somebody’s coming out,” Axel said, his heart speeding up. “Oh shit. Now we’ll find out who’s driving this thing.” He was staring at the side door of Jaws, eyes wide open, hands curled into tight fists.

Time stopped for all those waiting to find out who’d come to their rescue. There was a part of Axel – it was crazy but it was there – that hoped Chuck Kowalski, dressed in full Armageddon costume, would make a grand entrance.

God, wouldn’t that be something?

A solitary figure appeared on the roof of Jaw. It was a man dressed in a suit. He walked towards the front of the MBT in slow motion, a dark, grainy figure perched above the windshield.

There was silence as the crowd processed what they were watching.

Who they were watching.

A series of gasps filled the silence, spreading out quickly. It sounded like music. Hushed voices broke out of their shells, emerging as triumphant cries of joy that soared through the night.

“It’s him!”

“He’s alive!”

“He’s alive!” Lars said, his face lighting up.

Damon Rage, the forty-eighth President of the United States, was alive. He’d survived the attack on Hollywood and here he was, seemingly ready to bring his people back from the dead. He was unruffled – a slim, handsome man in his mid-forties with black curly hair and smooth, tanned skin. He wore a gray, tailor made Armani suit that gave him the air of a Wall Street banker who’d strayed into the White House by accident.

“USA! USA! USA!”

When the crowd saw their Commander in Chief they went berserk. They jumped up and down, a stationary stampede that felt like an earthquake on Melrose Avenue. Strangers kissed strangers. Axel felt arms around him, dragging him into a thousand embraces. He clung onto his cap for dear life.

All of this was surprising given how much the country had turned against their leader in recent years. This was mainly due to a series of political and personal failings that had seen Rage pick up the lowest approval ratings in a long time. Indeed, the power of public feeling was so strong that it had hurtled Rage towards the brink of impeachment. It was suggested that the main reason he attended the charity event at Paramount Studios, an event that would raise money for sick kids in poorer communities, was because it was yet another chance to repair his cracked image.

But now?

All was seemingly forgiven. America had bigger things to worry about than the moral failings of the man in the Oval Office. Nobody was perfect after all.

A woman emerged on the roof of Kong. It was Jezebeth Black, leader of the opposition. She’d been at the Paramount gathering too. Her appearance beside Rage prompted a fresh burst of excitement amongst the crowd. Black was seventy years old, with dyed black hair tied into a bun. It was a hairstyle that exposed her long, wrinkled neck, which gave her a slight extraterrestrial-like appearance. She wore a tight, dark suit that exposed her waif-like figure.

The two most influential politicians in America were alive. And the crowd was loving it.

“USA, USA, USA!”

Both President Rage and Jezebeth Black were carrying a small megaphone.

The cheering went on for at least five minute. Eventually, Rage was forced to signal for quiet with an outstretched arm.

As the crowd simmered a man appeared at Rage’s back. Axel’s jaw dropped. He was more of a giant than a man, dressed in a dark suit with a violent spike of angry red-hair on his head that looked lethal to touch. This freak of nature was easily 6’5 or more, and built like a fair-skinned, freckled Hercules.

The red giant remained a silent, menacing presence at Rage’s back. His eyes roamed the crowd and even from a distance Axel didn’t dare meet his gaze.

Rage brought the tip of the megaphone to his lips.

“My fellow Americans,” he said. “What can I say to you? What can I possibly say about what’s happening tonight? If the initial reports are right, this dreadful attack is not isolated to the west coast. There are worrying reports coming in from all over the nation. First things first however, we must remain calm and practical in the face of this crisis. Calmness and practicality – these two qualities will be our saviors. Mark my words.”

“What are we going to do?” somebody yelled.

Jezebeth Black stepped towards the edge of Kong.

“Mr. Rage is right,” she said, her voice tinny and robotic through the amplification device. “Cool heads must prevail.”

A few people applauded.

“Jezebeth and I,” Rage said, “along with some of our party members who traveled to California with us, have held an emergency meeting on board these vehicles, these MBTs I’m told they’re called, which were generously donated to us by the good people at Paramount Studios.”

Another round of applause.

“Without a doubt ladies and gentlemen,” Rage continued, “this crisis represents the toughest moment of our political lives so far. We don’t know the specific source of these attacks yet or how they managed to…”

“What the hell do you know?” a bitter-sounding voice cried out. “Isn’t it your job to know? To stop these things before they happen? How the hell could this sort of thing happen in twenty-first century, surveillance-obsessed America?”

Axel glanced at the faces gathered around him. He sensed something dark, bubbling its way to the surface.

“Yeah,” a female voice called out. “You’re here in Hollywood hanging out with models and celebrities while our enemies are dropping bombs on our heads. I can’t find my son for Christ’s sake! He’s fifteen years old. How are you going to help me find my…”

The voice choked to a halt.

President Rage held up a hand.

“Don’t worry about our enemies,” he said. “I assure you that part of the problem has been dealt with. And I mean dealt with. Let me put it this way my fellow Americans – we’ve shut the door so that no more flies can get into our country. All we have to do now is get rid of the flies that are already inside the house.”

Rage clicked his fingers.

Both Kong and Jaws lit up at his command. A solitary beam of white light, a cylindrical tunnel shot out from the side of both MBTs, lighting up the banners at the windows.

There was another banner that Axel had missed first time around. Two words were printed on this one, black print on a white sheet:

ELEKTION NIGHT!

A gallery of confused faces in the crowd stared up at the President.

“We must face facts,” Rage said. “Tomorrow our country will not look the same as it did yesterday. From what I hear, Washington is in ruins. That means Congress is gone. The federal government as we know it ladies and gentlemen, is over. This country, if it’s to survive and rebuild, must start over again. Jezebeth and I – thank God – are still alive. But it’s not up to me and it’s not up to Jezebeth who leads America back to the light. As President, I must take my share of responsibility for what’s happened tonight. I cannot simply expect you to allow me back in as tomorrow’s leader, not without due democratic process. What I’m saying friends is that if I’m to lead us back to glory, it will be because you want me to. After all, nobody can argue with democracy.”

“Is this really happening?” a voice behind Axel said.

“And,” Rage continued, “that’s why we invite you to cast your vote tonight. Use your voice. I’m calling an emergency election, right here in Hollywood. Who do you want to lead the resurrection of the United States? Jezebeth Black or me. That’s the choice we’re asking you to make.”

There was a moment’s silence. A scattering of boos emerged within the crowd.

A blond-haired man of about forty stepped forward. He was a towering figure in a green trenchcoat and he stopped about twenty feet from Jaws and Kong, arms outstretched as if offering up a challenge to the two politicians.

Axel watched the red giant at Rage’s back. His back stiffened as the blond man approached the MBTs.

Someone else pushed their way out of the crowd. A thickset black man, wearing a white t-shirt soaked in what might have been blood, went over and stood beside the blond. The two men exchanged glances at one another, as if communicating silently. Then they turned back to the MBTs.

The booing fizzled out.

“President Rage,” the blond-haired man said in a sharp. confident tone. “My name is Gunther and this here’s my buddy Jack.”

Rage’s handsome features were half-cloaked in the darkness. “Gunther and Jack,” he said. “What can I do for you two gentlemen?”

It was Jack who pointed to the ‘Elektion’ banners.

“We’ve got hundreds of frightened people here,” Jack said. He sounded more pissed off than Gunther. “And we got thousands more running around the streets, looking for help. Millions, if we’re talking about the rest of the country. They’re out there searching for lost loved ones. We need medical supplies and support. We need food and shelter. The police are nowhere to be found. The army? The air force? Are they fighting off your flies Mr. President sir?”

“We thought you were here to help us,” Gunther said. “You saw how relieved these people were when you showed up in these MBTs. And this is what you give them – you’re calling an election?”

Jack turned around, pumping a fist in the air and whipping the crowd into a frenzy. Jack’s shoulders were so broad they made Atlas look like Woody Allen in comparison.

Rage’s hands were outstretched, appealing for calm.

“How could this happen?” somebody shouted.

“We’ve been ambushed by outsiders from within.” Rage said. “And now they’re using some of our vast military resources against us. That they’ve passed themselves off as true Americans like you and I – it sickens me. It really does. But try to understand my friends, this vote is…”

Gunther laughed out loud.

“If it’s all the same,” he said, “I’d rather vote for the garbage man to be the next President. Or the postman. Or the waitress who served me my waffles at breakfast this morning. She was definitely more capable than you Rage.”

“Will you listen please?” Rage asked. His voice cracked with frustration. “Will you listen to what I have to say?”

“Tell us something worth listening to then,” Jack snapped. “What are you doing about this mess for Christ’s sake?”

Rage nodded. “Very well. How about this then? Before we lost communication with my military advisors, my trusted military advisors, we held an emergency telephone conference. And I can tell you now my friends, that the United States of America has launched a successful counterattack against those responsible.”

Jack’s face scrunched up in confusion. “Against those responsible?”

Rage’s eyes twitched impatiently.

“We’ve undertaken a series of nuclear launches at pre-arranged targets. And I’m pleased to report ladies and gentlemen, that those launches have been successful. We got the bastards good for this.”

There was a moment of stunned silence in the crowd.

“Who exactly is them?” Gunther asked.

Rage’s face slipped out of the light.

“All of them.”

Gunther and Jack looked at one another. Both their jaws almost dropped off.

“All of them?” Gunther yelled. “We ask you what you’re doing about this and you tell us you’ve ordered a nuclear assault on a group of countries that might have had something to do with the attack? Am I hearing this right?”

“Leadership is about making hard choices,” Rage said. “In order to eliminate the threat we had to eliminate all possible threats.”

Axel heard Kasey gasp beside him. She wasn’t the only one flabbergasted either.

“Is he actually saying this?” Kasey said, turning to Axel. “What a dick.”

Axel shrugged, feeling helpless. He was searching for a possible route through the crowd that would get them out of there.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Jack and Gunther were barraged with people in the crowd who wanted them to address the President. For a few minutes they looked like DJs taking requests at an outdoor nightclub. They did their best to listen but it was obvious just by looking at them that they were as stunned as everyone else on Melrose Avenue. After a hurried discussion with a handful of the most vocal individuals they turned back to the MBTs, signaling to Rage and Black that they were ready to talk.

Rage and Black were perched atop their respective vehicles. Waiting.

“Mr. Rage,” Gunther yelled, loud enough for everyone in Hollywood to overhear. “Miss Black. Let’s lay our cards on the table shall we? Something smells bad here. Real bad, and I’m not talking about the stink of all these dead bodies on the streets. What do I see here tonight? A President on the brink of impeachment, a sudden attack on our country and a ready-made excuse to disable any up and coming superpowers that might be considered a threat.”

“And that unpopular, soon to have his ass impeached President,” Jack said, stepping forward, “will come out of this in a much better position than he did going in. Especially if he can say he’s been democratically elected in the aftermath. The truth is Mr. Rage, that while everyone else is running around in a panic tonight, you look a little too…ready.”

Rages stared at the two men, his eyes concealed in the darkness. He turned around and whispered something to the red giant standing at his back. The giant nodded and walked back to the sunroof.

“And what about you Miss Black?” Gunther said, shouting at the elderly woman still standing on Kong’s roof. “Are you in on all this too?”

“This guy,” Jack said, pointing at Rage but staring at Jezebeth Black. “He won’t play fair.”

Jezebeth Black smiled and shook her head.

“Confusion is natural,” she said. “Anger in these circumstances is natural too. And the need to blame? Perfectly natural gentlemen. But we must avoid the temptation to lose ourselves in wild conspiracy theories.”

She lowered her megaphone and stared down at the people from her high vantage point. The woman was as still as a mannequin. Axel sensed a vague detachment in her expression, almost as if her face was a mask of sorts, a perma-grin etched on the front.

The crowd was edging its way towards the two MBTs, inch by inch. Most people went forward willingly, inspired by the brave stand of Gunther and Jack, infuriated by the startling accusations of an inside job, as well as the startling sight of celebrities and supermodels inside both MBTs, gazing down at the crowd from bulletproof vantage points. Like they were staring at animals in a zoo.

Others weren’t moving forward so willingly, but they were in the thick of it and had little choice but to go with the momentum. Axel and his friends were very much in this group.

“We should go,” Axel said. “I think we should get out of here.”

Kasey nodded. “Yeah. I agree.”

But Lars and Charlie couldn’t hear Axel. At that moment they were being pushed forward by a group of about ten angry men and this wave of frustration carried them further away from their two friends.

There was bewilderment on both their faces. And fear.

“Lars!” Axel yelled, cupping his hands over his mouth. “Charlie!”

A loud chorus of boos filled the air.

“We’re calling the election tonight,” Rage announced into the megaphone.

The booing got louder.

“No ballot boxes, no exit polls. We simply ask you to show up in Hollywood Boulevard later tonight, beside the Walk of Fame, and raise your hands in favor of your preferred candidate. You can choose Jezebeth or myself. It’s that simple ladies and gentlemen. We must deal with this crisis but we must do so with proper and legal leadership. All of that starts with your vote.”

“I VOTE FOR IMPEACHMENT!” a voice cried out.

The crowd howled in agreement.

“My fellow Americans,” Rage said. “I urge you to concentrate on the task at hand. That is survival.”

Gunther had to yell louder than ever in order to be heard.

“On behalf of the American people Mr. Rage,” he said walking closer still. “You’re fired. And the reason for your dismissal is gross incompetence. This country’s fallen so far down the toilet it’s halfway down a fucking sewer. And that’s on you! We’re taking charge of this mess and we the people demand that you surrender these MBTs to those who need it most. The sick and wounded, the elderly and young children. Get out, get out now I say!”

“YES!” the angry mob shouted. “YES! YES!”

Lars and Charlie were nowhere to be seen. They were still buried within an angry sea of bodies moving closer to the frontline.

“Lars!” Axel cried out. “Charlie!”

He could barely hear his own voice.

What Axel did hear was a loud whirring noise that transcended the grumblings of the angry crowd. This was followed by a series of rapid-fire clicks and then a hint of movement at the side of Jaws.

“Oh Christ,” Kasey said. “They’ve prepped the guns. Axel! The guns are moving at the side, do you see?”

Axel saw it. He’d nearly soiled himself in the process. The fat barrels attached to both Jaws and Kong had edged forward a few inches, adjusting position at a slow, almost dreamlike pace.

But to Axel’s surprise, Jack was laughing at the head of the mob.

“What you’re going to shoot us?” Jack yelled. “For standing up to you? For questioning your fitness for duty?”

“Of course not,” Rage said, backing off a few inches. “But I’ll repeat this one time and one time only. Do NOT come forward – take another step forward ladies and gentlemen and we’ll have no choice but to interpret your actions as a threat.”

“Oh fuck,” Axel said, his eyes bloated with terror. “Oh fuck, what do we do Kasey? We’ve lost Lars and Charlie.”

“Lars!” she screamed. “Charlie! Where the fuck are you? We need to go. NOW!”

She might as well have been miming the words.

Axel choked on the stink of body odor – it was everywhere, like the smell of burning flesh that permeated across Hollywood. He could even taste it at the back of his throat.

“Start pushing your way to the back Kasey. NOW!”

They made a run for it, turning their backs on the President, Jezebeth Black and the two MBTs.

“He thinks he can scare us with a prop from a TV show,” Gunther said. He roared with laughter. “You see? That’s how stupid your President thinks you are. He thinks he can frighten you with a toy!”

There was a howl of high-pitched laughter that spread throughout the crowd.

Axel barged forward, trying to force a gap through the stubborn wall of bodies that blocked their path out of there.

“No,” he said. “They’re not toys.”

“What did you say?” Kasey asked, screwing up her face.

Gunther was the man when it came to public speaking. No doubt in Axel’s mind. Gunther, along with Jack, had balls of steel to stand up to the President, but he was dead wrong on this one.

Axel spun around, trying to find his voice.

“THEY’RE REAL! THE GUNS ARE REAL!”

It was like a mouse trying to roar in the jungle. With a groan, Axel grabbed Kasey by the arm and barged his way back into the advancing crowd. He imagined himself as a 6’5 two hundred and thirty pound football player, shoulder-barging hundreds of opponents to the ground, knocking them down like bowling pins. A rain of colorful curse words came his way but Axel didn’t care. He could only hope that Lars and Charlie were working their way to the back too. And quickly.

“C’mon,” he said, keeping a tight grip on Kasey’s forearm. “Move, move, move!”

Rage’s voice was louder and more distorted in the background.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “I said get back – don’t take another step forward or else!”

“Give it up Rage!” Jack shouted over the crowd. “You’re under citizen’s arrest for the murder of…”

Axel didn’t hear the end of the sentence. Jack’s voice was swallowed up in the charge of the crowd. Holy shit, Axel thought. They’re doing it.

He glanced over his shoulder.

They were doing it. The rebels were storming the MBTs, sounding every bit like a thousand-man army on horseback riding down Melrose Avenue.

“I said STOP!” Rage bellowed.

Axel’s blood ran cold. He abandoned the escape attempt and with Kasey’s arm still locked in his grip, he pulled the rest of her down to the ground.

Just in time.

There was a blast of shattering gunfire. The guns intermingled with the sound of high-pitched screams to create a hellish symphony of terror on Melrose Avenue.

Axel had heard the sound of machine guns on TV. He’d heard a cop fire a pistol in real life after a bank robbery in Downtown LA once but it was nothing to get excited about. Guns sounded better on TV in Axel’s opinion and it made for a powerful experience, especially with a good set of speakers throttling his eardrums, providing an authentic experience of life on the American wastelands, riding alongside Chuck Kowalski in the mighty Goliath and shooting the heads of the undead.

But zombies didn’t scream.

The people ran for their lives, their short-lived revolution over. They fled the giant guns that spat lead hailstones at them indiscriminately, cutting all escape attempts short.

Axel pushed his weight on Kasey’s back, like he was trying to force her through the surface of the road and into the safety of underground. Footsteps crashed all around him, but thank God no one tripped up over his body.

People dropped like dying trees. Axel winced, closing his eyes and listening to the groans of the dying. Names spilled out of their mouths, their last words and breath wrapped around thoughts of loved ones. Mostly however, their final utterance was a mess of gargled sounds.

“Lars,” Axel said. “Charlie. Oh fuck…”

Eventually the shooting stopped. Axel had no idea how long the whole thing had lasted – it could have been five seconds or five hours for all he knew. Time meant little in dreamland.

But it wasn’t a dream.

Afterwards, a chilling silence crept over Melrose Avenue. It didn’t last long as it was pushed aside by the weak, fading cries of the dying.

Axel felt Kasey struggling underneath him. He loosened his grip but he didn’t let go of her, not entirely.

His body was shaking. So was Kasey’s.

“Axel,” she whispered. “Christ’s sake you asshole. I said are you okay? Tell me. Are you hit?”

“No.”

“You’ve got blood on your face,” she said, looking up with a shocked expression.

Axel touched his cheek. It was warm and wet.

“It not mine.”

“What…”

Axel pressed a finger to his lips. “Shhhhh…”

They lay there both of them, too frightened to move. Axel’s insides clenched as he heard the gruesome sound of other people sliding over the road, doomed and yet still trying to get away from the danger. There was a squelching noise as the fading wrigglers waded through a river of blood and infinite body parts. There was coughing and spluttering.

“I need to find them,” Axel said, keeping his voice as quiet as he could. “Lars and Charlie. I need to go.”

“Okay,” Kasey said, nodding “But be careful. If anyone comes out pretend you’re dead.”

Axel nodded. “Stay here okay? And don’t move.”

“I won’t.”

Axel set off, crawling in slow motion, his fingers clawing through the hot dampness. He passed an endless display of fresh corpses, a sea of white, blank eyes staring up at the sky. The dying were worse than the dead. The dying reached out for him, begging for help that he couldn’t give.

“Oh Jesus,” Axel whimpered. His insides felt tightly clenched and freezing cold.

He searched the bodies, looking for a glimpse of something familiar.

It wasn’t long before he saw them.

Lars and Charlie were lying side by side on their backs, pressed up tight against one another. Unbearable sadness hit Axel’s heart like a punch to the face. As he came closer he thought of two people wrapped up together in the cold, snuggling up in an effort to keep warm. The boys’ eyes were open. They were cloudy like the eyes of a waxwork.

Their bodies riddled with bullet holes, specks of blood dirtying their faces.

Numbness crept into Axel, accompanied by a whispering voice that told him now was not the time to grieve. He had to listen, even though he couldn’t quite comprehend the fact that these lumps of meat, which had meant the world to him, would never get up and do things again. Lars would never bitch about the long walk to Golden Apple to get comics. Charlie would never be…well, he’d never be Charlie. The sickly-looking kid who knew everything.

“Oh shit…”

“Blaze!” a familiar voice yelled. “Where are you Blaze?”

Axel froze.

For some reason, Rage still thought it necessary to talk through the megaphone.

“Oh good there you are,” he said. “I want you to go down there Blaze and make sure we have no witnesses left. Understand? Especially those two assholes that stirred up the crowd in the first place, drumming up wild conspiracy theories and getting everyone’s blood boiling. This disaster right here? That’s on them.”

Axel lay flat on his stomach, listening to the terrifying hiss as Jaws’ folding doors were opened. Kasey was right. If he played dead it would be okay. You can’t kill someone twice after all.

Footsteps approached.

Axel kept his eyes open because that’s what the dead did. He saw the red giant, the one Rage had called Blaze, stop a few feet away from where Axel was flattened on the road beside Lars and Charlie. Axel could hear the red giant breathing.

Blaze took a close look at all the bodies lying in the immediate vicinity. He stared left, then right. Then he did it over again. And again. The way his head moved reminded Axel of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator – the careful and precise movement of a natural killer.

There was a nasty, gaping cut on Blaze’s right hand, which looked fresh and painful.

After a minute, Blaze walked towards the center of the road. Away from Axel and the bodies of Lars and Charlie.

Axel breathed a sigh of relief but it was short-lived. The man-mountain in the black suit, pistol in hand, was now walking over to where Kasey was hiding out.

On his way, Blaze coolly dispatched anyone who was still wriggling or begging for help.

“No! Please!” a woman’s voice pleaded.

Crack.

Blaze’s murderous footsteps fell silent. There was a long pause, followed by a deep gurgle of laughter.

“Well hello there,” his deep growl of a voice said. It was the perfect voice for a giant monster.

A pause.

“You’re not very good at playing dead are you?”

Axel felt like puking. He turned his head to the other side for a better view. To hell if anyone noticed him.

There was a loud shriek as Blaze yanked Kasey up to her feet. Axel’s eyes bulged as the red giant dragged Kasey back towards Jaws like she was a toy doll. Kasey kicked and screamed and punched with all her strength. She spat at him but she was a fly in the hands of a gorilla.

“Let go of me!” she hissed.

Axel froze. His lanky sprinter’s body was as lifeless as all the other people lying around him. The slightest movement meant a bullet in the head.

Although it was torture he could do nothing. He knew he’d be no help to Kasey if Blaze got to him first.

I’ll find you, he thought.

“Another red head,” Blaze said, ogling his prize before throwing her inside Jaws. “This election’s going to be more fun than I thought.”

He laughed and Axel’s head dropped onto the road. It was only now he realized that at some point he’d grabbed the hands of both Lars and Charlie.

Axel squeezed.

Their hands were so cold.

Chapter 4

Nolan was alone in the Paramount parking lot.

The onslaught of grief had reduced his physical wounds to nothing more than background noise.

He cradled his dead dog, not seeing the smoke or the flames all around him.

Nolan saw only the past.

* * *

“We’ll be safe in these?” President Rage had asked Nolan earlier that night. “You’re sure about that Mr. Nolan?”

“Perfectly safe,” Nolan said, leading the President, Jezebeth Black and a pack of other flustered-looking suits across the lot. He was taking them over to the three MBTs – Goliath, Jaws and Kong – which up until that point in the evening had been ornaments at the Paramount party. Something cool to stand beside while taking a selfie.

Now they’d become three fortresses on wheels.

It was Nolan’s producer, the larger than life Sam Taylor, who’d urged Nolan to guide Paramount’s guests of honor to safety. The main reason was that Nolan was the best person for the job – he knew the MBTs inside out, and as well as any of the tech people working on Goliath.

Nolan had agreed to Sam’s request. Reluctantly.

“Get them the hell out of Hollywood,” Sam’s John Wayne-esque voice echoed in Nolan’s ears. “Take it from there, put some miles between you and civilization – that’s all the plan old friend.”

After that, Sam had jumped into his Mercedes and sped off like it was the start of Le Mans. The man was desperate to get back to the Hollywood Hills to check on his family. At least that’s what he told Nolan.

Nolan had rounded up the panicked suits quickly while Diesel trotted at his heels.

The President and Jezebeth Black were also tight at Nolan’s back, along with a select group of celebrities – actors, models, directors and God knows what else – all of them desperate to claim a seat inside one of the MBTs.

Another explosion. This one sounded closer.

Hysterical screaming filled up the parking lot once again.

Nolan could only imagine what it was like out there on the streets tonight, running for your life amongst all the screaming and fire and confusion. And those people didn’t have MBTs to take shelter in. Jesus Christ, what was this? What was happening? Those LA bigwigs loved to throw the phrase ‘earthquake proof’ around when talking about the fancy new buildings in their city but they sure as hell weren’t immune to firebombs and whatever else was falling out of the sky tonight.

Distant fighter jets zipped back and forth across the heavens.

“C’mon Diesel,” Nolan said in a gruff voice, making sure his boy stayed close. He wished Sam had never asked him to do this. Nolan and Diesel could have been long gone by now if he didn’t have to babysit the suits.

He turned around to make sure everyone was keeping up. A flock of Secret Service agents – SS, Nolan liked to call them – had formed a neat circle around Rage and Black, as well as some of the other suits.

Nolan noticed that all the politicians ran like nerdy kids who were bad at gym.

“C’mon!” he yelled, speeding things up. “Go, go, go!”

They closed in on the MBTs. Before getting there, Nolan stopped and turned around once more to face the crowd. Jesus, he felt like the Pied Piper of Hollyweird. He’d built up quite the following now – politicians, movie stars, assorted celebrities and of course the SS – they were all trailing him across the huge parking lot. He was the man who knew the MBTs and the MBTs were their ticket to safety.

Diesel sat down, pressing his solid frame against Nolan’s legs. The dog felt familiar and Nolan patted his head. Diesel licked Nolan’s hand in return.

“Alright,” he said, holding his hands up. He glanced briefly towards the heavens. The motorized hum of the jets was fading. With any luck he had a minute or two to say a few important words.

“Now these MBTs,” he said, “that’s Monster Bus Tanks for anyone who doesn’t know – they’re not props from a TV show. Got it? Not props. This shit’s for real ladies and gentlemen. We’re talking real guns and real bullets and that’s just for starters. These babies aren’t toys and so anyone climbing aboard tonight cannot fuck around with them. I repeat – do not fuck around with these machines. Don’t touch anything. That’s rule number one. I don’t care how much you’ve had to drink tonight, how many lines of coke you’ve snorted off somebody else’s ass or how many Oscars you’ve got – you disobey rule number one and I’ll kill you.”

Nolan wiped the sweat from his forehead. It felt like he was delivering the speech from the inside of an oven.

“Understood?”

President Rage stood at the head of the group, nodding his head.

“Of course Mr. Nolan. Perfectly understood.”

“What you’re looking at back there is death on wheels,” Nolan said. “It’s real. People are sick to death of CGI, which meant the network forked out for something three-dimensional and apocalypse-proof. I’ll say it for the last time people. Goliath, Kong and Jaws – they’re not toys.”

Rage stepped forward and gave Nolan a pat on the arm. Nolan’s insides clenched as the so-called leader of the free world violated Nolan’s laws of personal space. There was only one rule – don’t fucking touch. President or not, Nolan thought, this sharp-suited asshole did that again and he’d be picking his teeth up off the ground.

“You’ll drive Goliath?” Rage asked. “Won’t you Mr. Nolan?”

Nolan responded with a curt nod. “That’s the plan. Goliath’s the only MBT with a coded ignition and I’m the only one here tonight who knows the code. And that’s how it’s going to stay. So yes, I’m driving the big one.”

“That’s great,” Rage said. “And one of my men will drive Jaws and one of Jezebeth’s will take Kong. Sound like a plan Butch? Mind if I call you Butch?”

“Nolan,” Nolan said. “Call me Nolan. And do me a favor will you? Tell your drivers to just drive and leave the dashboard alone. When we get somewhere safe I’ll show your troopers how to handle the intricate details of these beasts. There’s a lot of things – dangerous things – that are better left alone for now. Until then, it’s just a regular bus alright?”

“You’re a good man Mr. Nolan,” Jezebeth Black said, emerging at Rage’s side. She was out of breath after sprinting across the lot with everyone else. Her wrinkled cheeks were bright pink under an excess of makeup. “When the dust clears we won’t forget this.”

“No we won’t,” Rage said. “May we start taking our people over to the MBTs Mr. Nolan? May we start deciding who’s going where?”

“Go ahead,” Nolan said. “When you’ve decided line them up outside for a head count and wait for me.”

“Of course.”

President Rage barked out instructions to his followers about boarding the MBTs. Some of the hangers-on pushed forward, desperately trying to listen or just to get further up front so they had a better chance of claiming their spot. Arms flapped in midair, gesturing wildly to get noticed. Almost everyone was yelling, trying to get the President’s attention.

It was the same with Jezebeth Black and her people.

The noise of squealing, frantic voices made Nolan dizzy. He was thankful that he only had Diesel to look out for tonight. He’d brought Diesel to the party because of the dog’s calming influence on him. Nolan knew the Paramount party would be surrounded by wall-to-wall pretentious assholes and he’d been right. Entertainers and politicians, it was a recipe for narcissism. Nolan had felt like a ticking bomb all night but thank God for his old pal walking at his side. Diesel’s silence was the best conversation in the world.

Rage and Black ushered their people to the MBTs. A swarm of overexcited bodies pushed forward like bargain hunters storming into the mall on Black Friday.

Nolan’s eyes narrowed.

Somebody was eyeballing him up ahead.

He’d already noticed the bulky redhead standing at Rage’s back all night. Ever since Nolan had first started rounding the suits up the giant man-leech had shadowed the President’s every move. And the leech had been giving Nolan the evil eye since then too. Nolan didn’t know if the guy wanted a fight or if the redhead was a Goliath fanboy with a mancrush. They came in all shapes and sizes after all.

Nolan decided to ignore it. Now wasn’t the time.

On the other side of the lot, he saw a group of about thirty people who hadn’t been selected to join the exodus. The outcasts. These people – a mixture of men and women of all ages – were still hanging around the lot, begging Rage and Black from a distance to allow them on board the MBTs. Some of them held their wallets and purses in the air, waving them back and forth like it was a flag. Nolan wasn’t sure if they were offering money or showing pictures of their loved ones.

The outcasts tried to get closer to the MBTs but the SS stifled every advance. The SS would leap forward, pushing the unwanted backwards across the lot. The SS didn’t need words to persuade the outcasts – they had semi-automatic rifles and pistols. The outcasts had nothing but their wallets and purses.

Nolan shook his head. He glanced over at the wall.

Rage and Black were in the process of picking and choosing their traveling companions for the exodus. Once a particular individual had been selected they (full of excitement at being picked) were pointed towards one of the three stationary MBTs. As Rage had the larger following his posse took up the vast majority of space beside Jaws and Goliath. Black’s group took their place beside Kong.

“Hey!” Nolan yelled over at them. He pointed a thumb at the outcasts. “What about them?”

Rage glanced at Nolan and turned away. Black looked at Nolan like he was a mosquito that had just bit her.

“Don’t concern yourself with them Mr. Nolan,” Black said. “Are the MBT doors open?”

Nolan gave Diesel a quick pat on the back.

“Begging your pardon ma’am,” Nolan said, shifting his body towards the old woman. “But I asked you a question. Why are those people not allowed on the MBTs?”

Jezebeth Black glared at Nolan. A ghoulish smile emerged on her face, displaying a set of flawless white teeth.

“This isn’t a TV show Mr. Nolan,” she said.

There was a deep, bellowing laugh at Nolan’s back.

Nolan spun around as the redhead giant walked past him, no doubt returning to his master’s side. His pink face wrinkled up with laughter.

“Something funny sweetheart?” Nolan asked.

“Yeah,” the man said, answering with a grizzly bear of a voice. “Actually there is.”

“Wanna share?”

The man stopped and turned back to eyeball Nolan. The laughter gradually subsided.

“Look at the great Chuck Kowalski, hero of the post-apocalyptic wasteland, hero of Goliath. When the shit hits the fan for real you don’t have a fucking clue. Do you sweetheart? Ha-ha!”

Nolan managed to smile. “I didn’t realize you were a fan.”

“Big fan,” the redhead snapped. “I tune in every week hoping that tonight’s going to be the night your fat head gets bitten clean off.”

Nolan shrugged. “You’re still paying my bills man. I got this great pool built in the backyard last summer – you should see it. Thanks for that.”

The redhead’s eyes flickered. “I watch on pirate channels.”

Nolan tut-tutted. “How very un-American.”

The SS man took a step forward, stretching up to his full height, which was 6’5 or 6’6’. His arms were as taut as two bowstrings and Nolan could practically see a plume of hot steam rising up off the pinkish-red skin.

“Take it easy sweetheart,” Nolan said, stepping forward.

They glared at one another.

“Nolan!”

It was Rage, yelling across the lot. His handsome features were scrunched into a puzzled, angry frown.

“Jezebeth asked you a question,” he shouted. “Are the MBTs open? Let’s get moving before those foreign bastards come back and turn us into red sludge.”

Nolan tore his eyes off the prickly redhead. He backed off a couple of paces, shifting towards the President. Behind Rage, Nolan made out three separate groups lined up outside their designated MBTs. There were about twenty to twenty-five people in each group and they all looked impatient to get their asses off the street.

“The President’s talking to you!” the redhead barked.

Nolan glanced over his shoulder at the outcasts. The SS bullies were still there, threatening to pop anyone who dared to get too close to the President and the chosen ones.

“This is bullshit,” Nolan said.

Why couldn’t he let it go? Those people over there – the outcasts – meant nothing to him. Let it go and get the hell out of Dodge.

He shook his head and marched over towards Rage. Diesel kept up, walking briskly at his side.

“What the fuck’s going on?” Nolan asked the President. “You see how big those MBTs are? There’s plenty of room for everyone. Why are those people back there being shut out?”

Rage, although dwarfed by Nolan, didn’t seem in the least bit intimidated.

“Mr. Nolan,” Rage said. He sounded like a man trying to suppress a wave of anger. “It’s time to go. Are those damn buses open or not?”

Nolan glared at the President.

“Please,” Rage said. “Are they open?”

Nolan hesitated. “Kong and Jaws are open. But Goliath’s locked. It’s like I said – that’s the only one that needs a code.”

Nolan jerked a thumb towards the outcasts.

“I answered your question,” Nolan said. “Now answer mine. There’s only thirty people back there at most and it looks like they’ve got nowhere else to go. Why are they being held back?”

Rage shook his head, then turned his back on Nolan. He walked over towards the MBTs, yelling boarding instructions to the passengers.

Nolan clenched a fist in anger. “Motherfucker.”

He watched as the people standing outside Kong and Jaws pulled the folding doors open. After that they ran inside like there was a stream of hot lava at their feet.

The people standing outside Goliath watched on in envy.

“Nolan!” Rage said, clicking his fingers several times. “Open Goliath for Christ’s sake!”

“Nolan you deaf prick!” the redhead roared. “When the President tells you to do something you do it. Understand?”

“Thank you Blaze,” Rage said.

There was an irksome smile on the Presidential face.

Nolan exploded with laughter.

“Blaze?” he said, turning back to the bodyguard. “Is that your real name? What the…? Are you a wrestler or something Blaze?”

Blaze’s eyes twitched. Nolan imagined an army of tiny red-haired gremlins messing around with the wires in the big man’s head.

“Open up that goddamn silver bus,” Blaze growled, stepping closer. “That’s a direct order from your Commander-in-Chief, the President of the United States.”

Diesel growled as Blaze came a little too close.

Nolan held his hand up in the air. “I’d stay right there if I was you Blaze,” he said. “My boy doesn’t like you.”

Nolan gave Diesel a gentle pat on the head.

“I don’t give a flying fuck what your dog likes,” Blaze said. “What’s the code for that silver one?”

Diesel’s growl picked up a little steam. A trickle of warm drool spilled from the side of the dog’s mouth and Nolan knew his pal wasn’t bluffing. Diesel had never been one for bluffing. His dark brown eyes had locked onto Blaze, who was a single wrong step from big trouble.

Nolan placed a hand on Diesel’s back – a private signal that meant stay put.

The engines of Kong and Jaws snarled in unison as they sparked into life. Nolan heard a round of cheers inside both MBTs. This was in stark contrast to the glum silence outside Goliath.

“Mr. Nolan,” Rage said. “It’s time to go.”

“Tell your goons to lower their weapons and let those people on the MBTs,” Nolan said. “Sam Taylor put me in charge of this getaway and if you want his MBTs you do what I tell you. I don’t know what it is about them, if they’re not important, rich or good-looking enough for you, but I don’t care. They’re coming with us.”

Blaze’s guttural laughter filled the parking lot once again. He stared at Nolan across the lot. His eyes were icy blue orbs, lit up by a crazy Joker-esque grin that practically orbited his head.

“Are you as tough as they say you are Nolan?” he said. “They say that Butch Nolan is the baddest man on the planet. They even make online memes about how tough you are. Former UFC champion, accomplished swordsman and apparently a crack shot too. That’s quite a crown you’re wearing boy.”

Nolan smiled. “You jealous Blaze?”

Blaze’s eyes went up and down, as if he was assessing Nolan’s physical condition. Nolan’s muscular frame was exposed under a simple black t-shirt and jeans combination. He wasn’t a dresser upper by nature and he sure as hell hadn’t bothered to dress up for the Paramount party tonight. Nolan’s limbs were long and lean in comparison to Blaze’s bulky slab of muscle. If Blaze was Atlas then Nolan was a bronze statue of Apollo.

“What the hell’s going on here?”

President Rage placed himself in between the two men. At six feet tall, Rage was no slouch himself but Nolan and Blaze standing on either side made the Commander-in-Chief look like a scrawny schoolboy trapped in between giants.

“We need to go!” he yelled. “It’s a miracle those jets haven’t hit Paramount yet but they’ll come back. If they find out they missed me then they’ll come back. We need to get that silver bastard opened up. I’m going with you Nolan. C’mon, let’s do this.”

Blaze’s foot slid an inch closer to Nolan. “Move.”

Nolan’s hand was still on Diesel’s back.

“Easy boy.”

Diesel’s focus remained on Blaze. His ears were pinned back and the tail was a black spear. He was a good dog, Nolan thought. Diesel knew an asshole when he smelled one.

“Let’s just leave this son of bitch and go sir,” Blaze said, turning to the President. “Let him rot here tonight. Or better still…”

Blaze pulled the pistol from the Kydex holster over his gun belt.

Rage stroked his chin thoughtfully.

“We need this man,” he said, staring intently at Nolan. “He’s the only one who knows the ignition code for Goliath.”

Blaze’s eyes narrowed. “Then we’ll get the code off him. I can drive Goliath sir.”

“Good luck getting that code,” Nolan said, winking at Blaze.

“This man’s a liability sir,” Blaze said, staring at Nolan.

Nolan ran a hand over the dark stubble that peppered his chin. He pointed at Blaze. “I don’t trust this guy. He’s not setting foot on any of my MBTs.”

Rage groaned like he’d been hit with a liver shot. “This man is my Chief-of-Security.”

“We all make mistakes,” Nolan said. “Tonight’s as good a time as any to fix those mistakes.”

Blaze spat at Nolan’s feet. Both fists were tightly clenched, attached to arms as thick as oak branches. “What’s the code?”

Nolan snarled. “Fuck you.”

A horrendous explosion ripped across the dark night. For a brief moment, it sounded like Hollywood was going through a giant paper shredder. And then, far beyond the Paramount lot, a fresh column of black smoke spiraled towards the sky.

Nolan looked over that way. Just for a second, but a second too long.

Blaze leapt forward. With a grunt, he sucker punched Nolan on the temple, following it up with a vicious left hook to the ribs.

Nolan winced as the blows landed. He dropped onto one knee with a groan. It was always the shots you didn’t see that put you down. Nolan knew that much from his fighting days. No time to brace yourself for impact.

It was only after he’d been down a few seconds that Nolan realized his hand was no longer on Diesel’s back.

One hundred and thirty pounds of snarling Rottweiler launched itself at Blaze. Diesel was a dog-shaped missile made of flesh, blood and teeth.

Diesel pushed Blaze onto his back with a thud. The gun slipped out of the bodyguard’s grasp and he screamed in agony as he felt Diesel’s teeth for the first time.

Diesel shook his head in a savage, unrestrained frenzy, annihilating the hand that had been holding the gun.

Nolan began to crawl towards the violent skirmish. Scalding drops of sweat ran down his face and into his eyes. He felt sick. He knew he had to stop this battle before the SS came along and stopped it for him.

“Diesel!” he cried out, sounding like a man doped up on horse tranquilizers. That sucker punch to the head had Nolan seeing colored lights in his mind’s eye. Every inch of progress along the parking lot felt like swimming a mile through quicksand.

Nolan ran into a sudden roadblock.

He narrowed his eyes, focusing in on a pair of slick, well-polished Italian shoes, just inches from his face. Nolan tilted his head upwards and saw President Rage standing over him. Rage’s face was a portrait of disappointment.

“I think Blaze was right after all. You will be staying behind Mr. Nolan.”

Screams and werewolf-esque snarls flooded Nolan’s mind. He saw Blaze and Diesel fighting one another – a battle for the ages. Blaze was much, much bigger and heavier but just as Blaze had taken Nolan by surprise, Diesel had taken revenge by doing the same to Blaze. The damage was already done. Blaze’s hand had been mangled to a bloody pulp.

“Stop,” Nolan moaned. “Diesel…stop.”

Rage squatted down and picked up the gun that Blaze had dropped. He frowned and wiped down the barrel with his sleeve, like he’d found something offensive on the surface.

Nolan reached for the President, eyes bulging in horror. He tried to move but his brain and legs were still on a different planet. Different solar systems. He felt like a slug in a sprint – losing, losing, losing.

Rage narrowed one eye and took aim. His finger caressed the trigger and he turned to Nolan. The bastard grinned.

Nolan clawed at thin air, begging with the hands that had once made him champion of the world.

“Pleeaaase…the code is 9…”

There was a loud bang, followed by a shrill whimper.

Nolan hissed. Then he hit his head off the ground several times, cursing himself for taking his eyes off Blaze.

When Nolan looked up he saw Rage helping Blaze to his feet, pulling his Chief-of-Security away from the still, silent Rottweiler. Dark blood flowed down the grimacing Blaze’s right hand. Nolan’s groggy attention wandered past the two men as he dragged his massive frame towards Diesel who was lying on his side, blood spilling out of a single gunshot wound to the chest.

You bastards.

He managed to push himself up onto all fours. Then, seconds later, he felt something like a steel bat slamming off his chest.

Nolan dropped back onto his face.

Blaze kicked him again when he was down.

“Motherfucker!” Blaze hissed. “You motherfucker!”

He leaned down and with a single, murderous punch sent a thousand black and white stars dancing in front of Nolan’s eyes.

Nolan’s head bounced off the ground. He felt something crack, like the sound of a branch snapping

“WHAT’S THE CODE?” Blaze roared. His face was inches away from Nolan’s head. Now it really did sound like a grizzly roaring in Nolan’s ear.

Nolan flipped onto his back. He reached up for the sky and felt the heat coiling around his arms like a serpent.

“What’s the code?” Blaze screamed.

Rage came over and grabbed a hold of Blaze’s arm. He began pulling his Chief-of-Security back towards the MBTs.

“Time to go,” Rage said. “We’ve stayed here far too long as it is.”

“What about Goliath?” Blaze asked. His eyes were wild and watery. “We need that code sir and I can get it. I swear I can…”

“Forget it,” Rage said.

“Forget it?”

“We’ll make do with two of them,” Rage said. “One for her, one for me. Now c’mon Blaze, let it go for Christ’s sake. We’ve got a lot of work to do tonight.”

“But the code,” Blaze hissed.

“Leave it damn it! That’s an order.”

Nolan lay still on the ground, listening to their fading footsteps in the distance. A few minutes later, the MBTs – two of them – pulled out of the Paramount parking lot. Twin headlights blinded Nolan and for a second everything was swallowed up in a dream of dazzling white light.

The light dissolved as the MBTs moved towards the road.

By then, Nolan was unconscious.

* * *

After Nolan woke up and found Diesel’s body he wished that they’d killed him too. This, whatever this was, was worse than death.

Maybe that’s why they’d left him alive.

For a long time he paced back and forth across the lot with Diesel in his arms. Talking to his boy, apologizing over and over again. Eventually however, Nolan’s head began to clear and he glanced over his shoulder towards the back wall.

The inside of his skull felt like a mangled car wreck.

Goliath was still there – a silent silver monster, half-cloaked in the darkness. Its presence was an invitation to mayhem.

Nolan staggered towards the machine, a sense of purpose sprouting in his mind like a flower reaching for the sun. It was this purpose that propelled his battered body forward. Nolan’s mind was a flood of conflicting thoughts. It was the age-old battle – God in one ear and the devil in the other. God had a lot of words. He told Nolan to take Goliath, to get out there on the street and help the thousands of people in need. To serve, to do his bit for the greater good. It was chaos out there in Hollywood and beyond and the world needed him. It needed Goliath.

The devil didn’t have much to say. He only told Nolan exactly what he wanted to hear. The devil was good at that.

Go kill the President, he said.

Chapter 5

Goliath tore through the streets at seventy miles per hour.

Nolan was behind the wheel, steering through a fog of tears. Before leaving the Paramount lot he’d put on the ‘Chuck Kowalski’ outfit. The Kowalski costume consisted of a tight fitting ‘wasteland wanderer’ jacket, which boasted a rugged vest-like sheet of armor over the chest and back. Long metal bracelets, covered in scratches, covered Nolan’s forearms. A dirty bandana was wrapped around the lower half of his face. The crown jewel of the outfit however, and the thing the fans went crazy for most of all, was an old samurai style battle helmet, painted dark red with a number of horn-like spikes sticking out at the top.

It felt right to dress up in these clothes. It was practical too. After he’d wrapped Diesel in a blanket and put him in one of Goliath’s upper deck bedrooms, Nolan realized his clothes were drenched in blood, both Diesel’s and his own. The prop wardrobe was on the upper deck and so Nolan had opened it. Without thinking, he’d reached for the Kowalski outfit, putting each item on until his bloody clothes were lost underneath the layers.

When it was done, Nolan felt like a different man.

He barely noticed the tall flames or the billowing smoke or the endless screams. He did notice the endless supply of people running into the middle of the road as he passed, desperately trying to flag down a ride in one of the most recognizable and freaky vehicles in the world. A gallery of faces went past in a blur – men and women, all ages, all colors. Maybe a few kids too. Nolan wasn’t paying enough attention to be sure.

When they ran out, Nolan slammed a giant fist down on the wheel and Goliath’s dinosaur-scream horn blared over and over again. The people on the road would cry out as if it really was a Tyrannosaurus rex on their heels. Their bodies jerked in a silly dance when they realized that the MBT wasn’t slowing down for them. The road always cleared quickly after that, the young and strong dragging the slow movers to safety on the sidewalk.

The damn windshield was cloudy. Nolan’s thumb flicked a toggle switch on the dashboard, bringing jets of water that sprayed the massive sheet of glass from all sides. Afterwards the wipers washed the screen dry until it squeaked.

“Where are you?” Nolan said, glaring at the road ahead.

He cut off Santa Monica Boulevard, turning south onto Vine Street.

As soon as Nolan made the turn, three people in shorts and t-shirts, dressed like tennis players, sprang off the curb. They charged at Goliath as if they planned on stopping the giant MBT with their bare hands. Nolan saw two women and a lanky, pencil-thin black man with a slight limp. Their charred, bloody faces stared hungrily at Goliath as it hurtled past them at speed. They looked like people from another planet.

Jesus, Nolan thought. It was like driving around on Halloween Night.

The screams faded into the night. They always did but others would come soon to replace them.

Vine Street was mostly quiet. All the stores, the local landmarks, including the huge Department of Power and Water building, hadn’t taken any significant damage.

Nolan slowed Goliath down to fifty miles per hour. Forty-five. He knew he couldn’t drive fast and angry all night or he ran the risk of missing important details. The little things.

“Easy,” he said, reaching for a bottle of water beside the driver’s seat. Nolan lowered his bandana and drained half the bottle in one slug. He still couldn’t feel any of the physical damage he’d taken back in the parking lot. Maybe the adrenaline rush was acting like armor, shielding him from anything that might slow him down. He’d hurt in the morning, he knew that much. And that was fine.

Goliath approached an isolated store on the left of Vine Street. In reality it was little more than a large shed. But something caught Nolan’s eye and he slowed the MBT down, reading the sign above the paneled door.

It said ‘Locksmith’.

There it was again. Something was moving behind one of the front windows. Left hand side, next to the door.

What the hell was it?

Nolan hit the brakes, his attention locked on the strange movement at the storefront. He sat in the stationary MBT, staring out at the little locksmith shed.

Two furry shapes swerved left and right on the inside ledge. After a while they stopped, pressed their bodies up tight against the window and stood on two legs. They pawed frantically at the glass.

Nolan saw something else. There was a small fire burning inside the shed.

“Son of a bitch.”

The cats – two tabby and whites – continued to paw the glass. From the outside it looked like they were cleaning the windows with their pads and doing a damn good job of it.

Nolan checked the side mirror to see if anyone else was lurking on the street. Nothing. Vine Street was dead.

He pushed the door release. Goliath’s folding doors hissed open and Nolan leapt through the gap.

He could smell the carnage outside. The reek of smoke was devastating but the stench wasn’t coming from the little fire inside the store – it was part of the neighborhood furniture now, a souvenir of the attack.

“Alright guys,” Nolan said, hurrying over to the window. “The cavalry’s arrived.”

The cats went berserk when they saw him. They clawed manically on the other side of the window and Nolan could see their mouths opening and closing like they were trying to say something.

Nolan gave the glass a quick tap. It wasn’t double pane so he could probably break through it easy enough. He took a step back, his eyes scouring the immediate surroundings to see if there was anything he could use to break the glass. A rock. Anything.

He stopped.

“Try the door idiot,” Nolan growled.

He went over and tugged on the metal handle. A click.

The door was unlocked.

Nolan rushed inside the store, which smelled of burning oak. There wasn’t much to the locksmith’s interior – it looked like more of a hobby shop than anything else, not surprising considering the miniscule, ramshackle exterior. A few shelves. A handful of display stands offering discounts on alarm systems. Nolan saw a line of metal safes against the wall.

The fire had started next to a small bench by the main counter. Miscellaneous items lay on the floor next to the bench, one of which was an overturned candleholder. Nolan wasn’t hanging around to investigate the potential cause any further. The fire was small but it was picking up fast.

It was also getting hot inside the shed.

The cats squealed in terror. The door had swung shut behind Nolan and they were going at it like someone buried alive scratching the inside of a coffin lid.

Nolan walked over, wondering if the cats were freaked out by the Kowalski outfit. Most likely they didn’t give a shit, not right now anyway. Kneeling down, Nolan scooped up the frightened creatures under one arm, letting them wriggle but maintaining a firm enough grip so he wouldn’t drop them. After a few seconds the animals froze, almost simultaneously, as if paralyzed with fear.

Nolan used his spare hand to catch the door and pull it open. He hurried outside and tapped in the entry code on Goliath’s external keypad. He released the cats on the lower deck and they bolted towards the apartment at the back, taking shelter behind the nearest couch.

“Settle in,” Nolan said, straightening the helmet on his head.

Nolan was on his way back to the driver’s cabin when he heard a strange noise outside. He froze. It was a shrill, wailing sound and Nolan immediately thought it sounded like somebody crying. Or worse, maybe it was another trapped animal.

“Oh shit.”

He couldn’t afford too many delays like this one.

Nolan jumped down onto the street and walked back towards the store. He could hear the flames crackling through the open doorway. Heat from outside and inside the locksmith store intermingled, warming an already clammy night up even further.

“Is somebody there?” Nolan called out.

The wailing noise stopped suddenly. It was as if whoever was out there had heard his call.

“Hello?” Nolan said.

Wild laughter exploded from behind the store. Sounded like more than one of them, whatever it was.

Nolan braced himself for action. “Show yourselves,” he said.

“Whatever you say man.”

Six men crept out from behind the little store. Three appeared from the left side, three from the right. They were all white and somewhere between twenty and twenty-five years of age at most. Nolan recognized their attire immediately – the shaved heads, the swastika tattoos, the ripped jeans and of course the sturdy Doc Martens on their feet.

The Nazi gang wielded a small arsenal of knives, chains, and steel baseball bats. Nolan could tell they weren’t bluffers who carried weapons just for show. He could see it in their eyes – they were famished for violence.

The man at the front pointed to Nolan’s Kowalski outfit.

“Didn’t know it was Halloween pal.”

Nolan pointed back, his finger moving over one Nazi at a time like he was counting heads. “Me neither. Pal.”

The leader paused, sizing up the man behind the costume. Then he laughed again, stabbing a thumb at the burning store.

“You help the little kitty cats mister?” he said. “Help the little-bitty kitty cats did ya?”

The others quickly joined in with the taunting, making shrill cat noises and clawing at thin air with their hands. This impromptu Nazi street theater came combined with further explosions of laughter.

“Meow, meow, meow!”

Nolan sized up the speaker, who he sensed was the leader. He was a squat kid with fat arms and thick shoulders. The blood red goatee that drooped from his chin looked like a tail hanging off his face. He was carrying a switchblade with a silver serrated blade and metal handle.

“Like animals do you?” one of the other neo-Nazis said. This guy was tall, gangly and albino pale. A giant black and red swastika tattoo was imprinted on his scrawny giraffe neck. Not the sort of guy you wanted to bump into in a dark alleyway.

The youngest in the pack was a boy, no more than seventeen at most. He jumped up and down like an overexcited monkey as he and his buddies teased Nolan. When he was done making cat noises the kid cackled and pointed at Goliath like it was the second coming of Hitler.

“Holy shit!” he squealed. “Look at the size of that fucking thing. It’s got machine guns coming out the side and everything. Holeeeeeeee Sheeeeit! I fucking love this town man. It’s so weird.”

Nolan rubbed his hands together. “You wasting my time boys?”

Switchblade Nazi grinned, displaying his crooked teeth. “You still don’t know pal?”

“Enlighten me baldy.”

“Our motivation is very simple,” Switchblade Nazi said. “As you can see, the neighborhood’s gone to shit. My friends and I need a car to get out of here and...”

“Plenty of cars lying around,” Nolan said, butting in. “Take one. Break the glass, hotwire the damn thing. Who’s going to notice a stolen car tonight of all nights?”

Albino Nazi glanced briefly at his friends as if to say – is this guy for real? Then he turned his attention back to Nolan.

“Yeah,” he said. “Hotwiring was a lot easier back in the old days. Too many complicated computer systems. The locking mechanisms are a bitch to crack.”

Nolan nodded. “So let me guess. You saw me driving down Vine and that’s when you put the cats in the window and set fire to the store? Right? Just happened to have a couple of cats lying around?”

Switchblade Nazi grinned. “You’d be surprised at what’s running around the streets tonight.”

“You ain’t kidding,” Nolan said.

Monkey Nazi was still bouncing up and down on his toes. The kid surely had rocket fuel in his blood.

“YEAH! We just wanted to see if there were any good citizens left you know? And if not – hey it’s just a couple of roasted cats. No big loss. We’ll find us a dog or something and try all over again. Sooner or later there’s always a sucker who’ll stop. Turned out to be sooner.”

Nolan kicked his boot heels off the edge of the curb. He was already loosening his joints, getting the blood flowing. While the Nazis weren’t Rage and Blaze they could still serve a useful purpose in the meantime. It was a hell of a lot better than hitting the steering wheel.

“Stupid kids,” he said.

Switchblade frowned. Then he stabbed the blade in Nolan’s direction.

“You’re a big guy mister but you’re outnumbered,” Switchblade said, slicing thin air with each syllable. “Don’t do anything silly. Now here’s what you’re going to do. Leave the keys to that tank thing in the ignition and we’ll let you run. Simple as that. We’ll even let you take the kitty-cats out.”

“I want his helmet!” Monkey Nazi screamed.

Nolan warmed up his calf muscles using the curb. He stood with his heels hanging off the edge, rising up onto his toes for ten seconds. Then he dropped his heels below curb level for ten. He repeated this several times as the Nazis grew increasingly bewildered.

“You kids want Goliath?”

Switchblade gasped. It was a raspy, choking noise that seemed to stick halfway down his throat.

“Kids? Do you know who we are? Do you know who you’re insulting right now mister and what we do to people who insult us?”

Nolan shook his head. “No,” he said. “And I don’t care either. But I tell you what big guy. You want Goliath? How about you fight me for it? The six of you against me. Doesn’t even have to be skin on skin – you can use your toys right there, I mean your weapons.”

Switchblade Nazi’s face resembled someone who was trying to read instructions in a foreign language.

“You’re stupid man. Have it your own way.”

He signaled to his teammates and the gang spread themselves out across the sidewalk. They edged their way towards Nolan.

“It’s on motherfucker,” Switchblade said, stepping back so his buddies could be first. “Just remember asshole when you’re all fucked up and bleeding on the sidewalk. I offered you a way out.”

“I’ll remember,” Nolan said.

Monkey Nazi cackled wildly, which reminded Nolan of Evil Ed from the original Fright Night movie. He swaggered forward, baseball bat in a tight grip.

His first swing missed by a mile. Undeterred by failure, he lunged at Nolan, snapping his teeth together like a rabid dog. Nolan judged the kid’s reach coupled with the length of the bat. He took three rapid steps backwards, deftly avoiding Monkey Nazi’s second attempt to crack his skull open. Nolan then sprang forward, turning his left hand into a four-fingered spear. He aimed at the young man’s eyes and found the fleshy target.

“Owww!”

Monkey Nazi sounded like a little boy who’d stood on a thumbtack. Nolan stepped forward. He yanked the bat out of the kid’s hand. Then he swung hard and and belted the little asshole in the chest, sending him down onto all fours. Monkey Nazi retched as his lungs grasped for air.

“Get him!” Switchblade yelled, backing off a step further.

The other Nazis charged to war. Despite their ferocious appearance they were clumsy brutes with a low fighting IQ. They reached for Nolan, demonstrating no awareness of closing the gap. This left their defense wide open. Nolan brought Monkey Nazi’s baseball bat down on their skulls, fending each one off before they got too close. He took three out in rapid-fire succession. When it was Albino Nazi’s turn, Nolan prolonged the action by kicking him in the balls first, dropping him onto his knees. One hard left hook to the jaw and Albino Nazi was asleep on the sidewalk.

“Who the hell are you?” Switchblade Nazi screamed, his eyes burning with horror. “Who are you man?”

Nolan shrugged. “Just a guy who loves cats.”

Switchblade Nazi dropped the knife and held both hands high in the air. He retreated towards the burning store.

“Please take me with you,” he said. “W-w-we’re just scared man that’s all. Kids, we’re just kids man! We didn’t mean anything by it.”

Nolan tapped the bat off his hand in 4/4 time. As he marched towards Switchblade someone jumped him from behind.

Monkey Nazi cackled hysterically as he piggybacked Nolan to the ground. As they fell, Nolan heard Switchblade running over towards them, having suddenly regained his taste for battle.

Switchblade screamed. “MOTHERFUCKER!”

Nolan rolled onto his back and threw a nasty kick in the air that landed flush on Monkey Nazi’s face. Blood streamed from a head wound. Nolan’s foot then sent the kid flying backwards. This time Monkey Nazi went down and stayed down.

Switchblade leapt on top of Nolan. The guy was heavy but clearly out of shape by the way he was breathing so hard. He’d picked up his blade again and as he pressed his weight down on Nolan he forced the tip of the switchblade towards Nolan’s face.

“I’m taking that bus man. I’m taking it!”

Nolan used his left hand to control Switchblade’s wrist. But he kept a loose grip throughout the struggle, letting the punk think he was gaining the advantage. Nolan waited as Switchblade leaned his head in closer and when it was on the money, Nolan shot his left leg in the air, wrapping it around the back of Switchblade’s neck. With that same move he also isolated the hand with the knife in it. Nolan hooked his right leg over his left shin, locking in a triangle choke.

Switchblade immediately dropped the knife. His body shuddered in Nolan’s grip.

Soon his face began to turn the color of beetroot.

“S-stopppppp. P-p-please man.”

Nolan grabbed the guy’s fat head with both hands and pulled him deeper into the choke.

“How does that feel you piece of Nazi shit?” Nolan said. “Getting dark is it? How does it feel knowing that my balls are the last thing you’ll smell before the lights go out?”

Switchblade tried to talk but all he could manage was a gargled choke. Like he was drowning. “N-n-nooo…pleeeease….”

Nolan loosened the choke slightly.

“Tell you what pal – answer me this and if I think you’re telling the truth I’ll let you walk. Have you or any of your skinhead girlfriends seen any other buses like this one riding around tonight? Think hard now.”

Switchblade coughed. He might have been trying to shake his head but his head was trapped in the vice-like grip of Nolan’s legs. It was hard to tell what his intention was, besides breathing.

“I asked you a question,” Nolan said. “Have you seen any other buses like this one riding around Hollywood tonight?”

“Nooooooo.”

“Sure about that?”

“Yessss.”

“Okay then.”

Nolan tightened the choke and Switchblade’s arms jerked like he’d been tasered by ten cops. “And one more thing pal. Are you ever going to trap any more animals in burning buildings to use them as bait? I understand it’s getting hard to speak. Tap if you want to say no. Don’t do anything if it’s a yes.”

Switchblade’s arm flopped around. It was obvious to Nolan that he was trying to tap the sidewalk.

Nolan let the choke hang for another couple of seconds.

“Good man,” he said.

He let go of the stranglehold and slammed his boot into Switchblade Nazi’s solar plexus, kicking him away. Switchblade fell backwards, rolling about on the ground and gasping for oxygen.

Nolan stood up and pointed to the burning locksmith.

“Enjoy your bonfire.”

With that he made his way back to Goliath, stepping over from the fallen Nazis en route.

Nolan climbed aboard and sat behind the wheel. With a wave to the Nazis, he pushed the release and the doors folded over.

He looked at his hands. There was a mild graze on the knuckles of his right. Apart from that he was in good shape.

“Everything alright back there?” he asked, leaning his head towards the aisle.

The cats didn’t answer. They’d disappeared somewhere and fortunately for them there were lots of places to hide. And they weren’t slumming it either. The interior of Goliath’s lower deck, as with all three MBTs, resembled a luxury apartment. The TV crew regularly used Goliath, Jaws and Kong as mobile accommodation whilst out shooting in Death Valley. Interior MBT shots were filmed in the Paramount studio, which gave TV audiences the impression that MBTs were a hell of a lot more rugged than the mobile Penthouses they actually were.

“Right,” Nolan said, turning back to the front. “Let’s get back to it. Maybe you guys can help me find the dog killer.”

Nolan drove south, swinging a right onto Melrose Avenue. He was cruising at about fifty miles per hour and holding it steady. He passed a couple of other cars going the other way at high speed and he also saw the occasional line of people running along the outskirts of the road, mostly in small organized groups. Some of the people were pushing shopping carts with what looked like all their worldly belongings inside, including blank-eyed children.

Nolan sighed and turned back to the front.

As he approached the double gates of Paramount. Nolan noticed that the windshield was covered in dust and debris all over again. He cursed and sprayed it, wondering where all this dirt was coming from. God knows what they were…

He slammed the brake hard, bringing Goliath to a sudden stop.

There was something on the road. Lots of things in fact, lying around haphazard as if they’d fell off the back of a truck. Things. Nolan leaned forward, trying to get a better look at this unexpected obstacle. He had the strange impression of being confronted by a giant pile of garbage bags dumped in the center of Melrose.

Then he saw the blood.

The arms.

The legs.

Nolan sat frozen behind the wheel, digesting what was out there. He’d driven into the aftermath of a massacre. Not garbage bags, but human beings.

“Oh Jesus.”

They were lying everywhere. There had to be at least a hundred and fifty people out there on the street – men, women and children. All of them lying under a shallow lake of dark blood, a gleaming shadow that to Nolan’s eyes at least, appeared to be moving.

An organized execution? Or had they been hit by a bomb? Nolan’s eyes skipped back and forth over the surroundings. There was no structural damage to suggest that the aerial attack had any direct involvement in whatever happened here.

No. These people were murdered on the ground.

Nolan punched the door release with a sluggish fist, wondering if this was more bait he was looking at. Had someone dragged the bodies here, building a roadblock to stop cars? Had they killed all these people for that specific reason?

Nolan shuddered as he stepped outside.

The streetlights beside the double arches were out. One or two others in the vicinity flickered weakly but Goliath’s headlights were the only real source of light. Considering what was in front of him, Nolan wasn’t too bothered about a lack of illumination. But he had to be careful. If it was a trap they could sneak up on him from anywhere.

He flinched.

There was a noise up ahead.

Nolan backpedaled towards Goliath. His eyes skimmed left and right and over his shoulder. Any second now he expected to see another gang of LA hoods crawling out of the woodwork, knives, chains and baseball bats ready to go. Maybe a gun this time.

Nolan cracked his knuckles, ready for another street skirmish. Beating up the local loser gangs was fun but he couldn’t waste all night doing it. He had to figure out if Rage was still in Hollywood or not and if not, then he had to make a call on which direction to go after him in.

“Who’s there?” Nolan said.

Very slowly, a young boy’s head popped up from behind a huddle of corpses. Upon seeing Nolan he jumped to his feet, a look of glazed emptiness in his eyes. He was a tall and gangly kid, wobbling on paper-thin legs to stay upright. His clothes, hands and face were stained with blood. He was only about twelve or thirteen at most, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt with a blue and white baseball cap pulled back on his head, exposing a dark forehead.

“D-d-don’t hurt me,” the boy said, his hands up in the air. “Are you with them? You’re in an MBT right? They’ve got the MBTs?”

“I’m not going to hurt you kid. What happened here?”

The boy stood like a mannequin.

“Alright then,” Nolan said. “Answer me this one instead. Who’s them?”

This time the kid didn’t hesitate.

“President Rage and Jezebeth Black.”

Nolan’s insides scrunched up like burning paper balls. “Is that right?” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to know where I might find them do you? President Rage? Jezebeth Black?”

The look of terror on the boy’s face faded for a moment.

“Say I know that costume,” he said. “That’s Chuck Kowalski’s outfit in Goliath.”

“Yeah?”

“And that MBT behind you is Goliath,” the boy said. “We were wondering where it was earlier you know? Rage and Black – they’re riding around in Jaws and Kong.”

“I know,” Nolan said.

The boy’s jaw dropped. “It’s you isn’t it? You’re Butch Nolan aren’t you? It’s really you!”

Nolan pointed to the carnage. “What happened here kid? Think you can tell me?”

The boy’s sudden joy at meeting Butch Nolan fizzled out. He visibly shivered in the fiery heat of the night.

“How long have you been here with all these…people?” Nolan asked.

Now it was Nolan’s turn to shiver. So far he’d been trying to avoid seeing the horrifying, intricate details of the dead. The little things – the way somebody wore their hair, a particular color of lipstick, the writing on a t-shirt that hinted of personality – anything that might reveal too much about the life that was lost.

“Don’t know,” the boy said.

“What happened?”

“They killed them all,” the boy said. “They used the MBTs, shooting at the crowd like they were paper targets at a funfair. It was over in seconds. Hundreds of people.”

He made a whimpering noise.

“They killed Lars and Charlie,” he said. “My friends are dead.”

The boy buried his face in his hands, almost pushing the baseball cap off his head.

“I’m sorry kid,” Nolan said. “That sucks bad.”

“Axel,” he said. “My name’s Axel.”

“Who killed your friends Axel?” Nolan said. “Who killed all these people? I need you to say it.”

Axel was wobbly on his feet, like someone who’d stepped off a rollercoaster too fast.

“The President,” he said. “I swear to God man. It was the President who did it. And Jezebeth Black too I guess. Both MBTs were shooting into the crowd, just shooting and shooting…”

Nolan stared hard at the boy.

“You don’t believe me?” Axel asked.

A pause.

“Oh I believe you Axel,” Nolan said. “In fact, I’m not surprised.”

“They kidnapped my other friend too,” Axel said. “Kasey. She was one of the survivors, like me. We might be the only ones, I don’t know. One of the President’s men dragged her back to the bus like she was a toy or something. Big slab of muscle, about your size. Redhead. Plug ugly.”

Nolan’s ears pricked up. “Redhead?”

“Yeah.”

“Axel,” Nolan said. “It just so happens I’m looking for the President and a big ugly redhead.”

Axel dabbed at the bloodstains on his t-shirt. “What do you want with them?”

“I’m going to kill them.”

“Why?” Axel asked in a quiet, wary voice. It sounded like he didn’t really want to know the answer.

“They killed my dog. My best friend. And they think they can get away with it.”

Axel fidgeted with his cap. “Why’d they do that?”

Nolan shrugged. “Why’d they kill all these people?”

Axel nodded. Then his face brightened up.

“I can help you find them Nolan,” he said. “We can help each other. Alright? I need to find Kasey – I’ve been laying low, just trying to figure out a way to get her back before that big bastard hurts her. I think he’s one of them pedophilers, you know? Either that or he’s a cannibal. Maybe he’s both.”

Nolan backed off. “Uh-uh. Not going to happen kid. I travel alone.”

“Please Nolan,” Axel begged. “I was too scared to do anything when that rat bastard took her. I owe her man. She’s my best friend and she’s all the true family I got left in this world. Please.”

“Can’t do it kid,” Nolan said with a shake of the head. “You don’t want to see any more killing. You think it’s bad here? When I get a hold of these bastards – imagine the worst thing you ever saw and then multiply it by World War Three. Then you’ll know what I’m talking about.”

“Please,” Axel said, clasping his hands together. Like he was in the front row of church.

“I’m sorry.”

Nolan walked towards Goliath, hoping the kid would leave it at that. That he’d shut up and let Nolan go.

“Wait Nolan!” Axel called out after him. “Wait!”

Nolan kept walking.

“There’s something else you should know,” Axel said. “About Rage. About what’s happening tonight. It’ll explain why all these people are lying dead here.”

That got Nolan’s attention. He stopped, then turned around.

“Spill it.”

“They’re holding an election,” Axel said, edging closer towards Goliath. “Tonight in Hollywood. An election man – can you believe it? Rage and Black announced it here but the people – these people – they were having none of it. One of the men even said Rage had something to do with the attack. You think there’s something to that? That all this – it was an inside job? Anyway the people turned on Rage and Black. They wanted to arrest them and…”

“That’s when they started shooting,” Nolan said.

Axel nodded. “Yeah. That’s when they started shooting.”

“An election?” Nolan said, lowering his bandana. When he smelled the sweetish rot in the air he put it back up again quickly. “Jesus. Vote for them? That’s like asking the drunk driver who just fender bendered your car for a ride home.”

“Crazy huh?”

“I wonder why Rage is even bothering with an election,” Nolan said. “Why doesn’t he just take charge? Why not just say he’s still President?”

“Because he wants to make it look good,” Axel said. “Legit. I’m young Nolan but I’m not dumb.”

“My guess?” Nolan said. “Jezebeth Black won’t make it to the election. Or if Rage does let her live through the night, it’s only ’cos he knows she’s got no chance of winning. And yeah you’re spot on kid – when he wins he’ll say he was legitimately elected and then he’ll start a new four year term. The slimy prick. If Washington and Congress are gone, what’s to stop him?”

“Something else I heard too,” Axel said. “Rage and his military chiefs launched a counter attack. Nuclear he said. They hit random countries that probably had nothing to do with this. Said it was self-defense.”

Nolan wasn’t easily shocked but he was getting there. “I tell you what kid, this fucking stinks.”

“Yep.”

“Jesus,” Nolan said, shaking his head. “That guy’s a frigging super criminal dressed as a politician. If he had something to do with the attack…”

“Walk of Fame,” Axel said. “That’s where the election’s taking place. Later on tonight.”

“I can’t let this election happen,” Nolan said. “If I take it away from him he’s got nothing. He’ll just be another bum on the street running for his life. ”

Axel hesitated, his mouth hanging open. “Say Nolan…”

“What is it? Speak up kid.”

“I’m real quiet. You don’t have to worry about me talking too much or anything like that.”

Nolan waved and turned around. He couldn’t stand there looking at all those dead bodies anymore. Especially the women and kids. All the stiffs, so it seemed, were staring at him. “So long Axel. Thanks for the info.”

He heard the pitter-patter of Axel’s feet coming after him.

Nolan spun around. “Go back to your family for Christ’s sake Axel! You’re NOT coming with me.”

Still the kid wouldn’t quit. He kept following.

Nolan stopped. “I said…”

“Family?” Axel said, cutting the man off. “What family? My mother doesn’t give a shit about me Nolan. If she’s alive she’s out looking for her dealer right now – that’s who she’s looking for. Not me. But she’s dead man, I just know it. My friends are my family, and two of them are lying back there. Dead! There’s only Kasey left and I need your help to find her. Please help me save her from that monster. You were sent to me Nolan, I just know it.”

The boy’s face wrinkled in confusion. He pointed a finger at Goliath.

“A CAT?” he yelled. “Holy…there’s a cat sitting on your windshield man. What the hell? You travel alone? You’ve got a cat for God’s sake but you won’t take me?”

Nolan groaned under his breath. He was wasting time. He had to dismantle this election and then bury Rage and Blaze in the debris.

He turned around.

“You got a problem with cats?” Nolan asked.

Axel’s eyes lit up. A smile appeared on his face and it was a good smile.

“I love cats,” he said.

Chapter 6

Kasey’s back was pressed tight against the wall.

After being dragged onto Jaws she’d taken refuge in one of several booths in the lower deck apartment. This booth was similar to those in retro fifties style diners – the seats were Coca-Cola red and white, thick-padded, cozy and fun. It was weird for a die-hard Goliath fan like Kasey to see this kind of thing. On the TV show the interior of Jaws and the other MBTs looked a lot different. On the show they were filthy and kitted out with just the bare essentials. Dusty, tattered seats, overhead compartments full of guns and machetes for slicing up zombies, a box of medical supplies, and that was about it.

The luxurious surroundings were of little comfort now.

Kasey was grateful that nobody had paid much attention to her so far. At first this had kind of freaked her out. When Blaze had forced Kasey onto Jaws she’d yelled to anyone and everyone at the top of her voice, hoping that someone would still care about a young girl being kidnapped by a pedophile. But nobody cared. They were all too damn grateful to be on Jaws to rock the boat. To raise concern about the Chief-of-Security’s behavior – that would get anyone’s ass kicked back onto the street.

And nobody wanted to be outside.

Fortunately Blaze was busy to hassle Kasey, at least for now. Last she knew he was upstairs discussing the campaign schedule with the President and the rest of the Secret Service.

The next stop on the trail was Sunset Strip. The driver had called it out about five minutes ago.

Waste of time, Kasey thought. It was all a sick and bizarre waste of time. People hadn’t listened at Melrose and they’d died horrifically for it. They hadn’t listened at any of the other stops they’d made so far either. Same thing every time. When the people realized that Rage wasn’t there to help them but instead to capture their votes in a loony election, the good folks of Hollywood had pretty much told the President – or was he ex-President already? – to go fuck himself. And although no one had blatantly accused Rage of being involved in the attacks like they had at Melrose Avenue, Kasey figured that a lot of people were thinking it.

Kasey sat back and watched as the hangers on who’d hitched a ride in Jaws went back and forth, mixing it up between the upstairs and downstairs apartments. It was like a party on wheels. The odor of smoke and hard liquor lingered in the air. Kasey recognized several famous actors and a few other celebrities who were mostly famous for being famous. There were also doll-like creatures called supermodels sitting on the downstairs couch, sipping wine and smoking weed. They gave Kasey the creeps. They looked ill and dead-eyed.

Occasionally, small groups of people would disappear into the lower deck bedrooms. These partygoers were always laughing as they went it, like they were playing some kind of game. They’d slam the door shut and then loud, muffled hip-hop blasted out from inside the room. And other strange noises followed too – sex noises, snorting noises and more mad, raucous laughter.

Kasey sat along, thinking about Lars and Charlie. But not too much – she couldn’t think about them too much, not now. Getting off this bus, that was the overriding priority and after she’d escaped – which she would do – she’d sit down and process what had happened to her friends. She’d cry, probably for days.

And what about Axel. Where was he now?

They’d taken her cellphone so that was out. It was useless anyway, having crapped out on Kasey not long after the attack. The entire grid was probably down. Even if she could find a working phone, who was Kasey supposed to call? LAPD was toast. And what would she say even if she did get through to someone that mattered? The President has kidnapped me. Yeah that one – turns out he’s actually a coke-sniffing megalomaniac, mass murderer. And his bodyguard’s a pedo. Who’d have thought it huh? Think can you help?

Kasey squirmed in her seat. Her bladder felt like it was about to burst. She’d been holding it in for about an hour now but at last she’d reached her limit.

She slid quietly off the Coca-Cola booth, stepping onto a narrow ceramic aisle. The aisle ran down the middle of the lower deck and its garish pattern mimicked the yellow brick road from The Wizard of Oz.

Kasey had already tried clicking her heels together.

There was a long, sprawling couch opposite the booths. The half-naked supermodels and everyone else on the couch were too stoned to notice Kasey walking past. They were all staring blank-faced at a giant flat screen TV attached to the wall. The news was on but there was no sound, just a conveyer belt of disturbing images coming in from all over the country – familiar American landmarks and skylines on fire, the endless smoke trails pirouetting towards the sky, and people running through the streets scared shitless, chased by monstrous dust clouds.

Kasey looked away.

Where was the bathroom? She didn’t want to ask any of the stoners on the couch. Probably didn’t even know their names. She thought about asking the driver – a black-suited balding man of about sixty with a face as gnarled as an old oak tree. But she decided against that too. Kasey had the feeling that the driver was the sort of guy who’d rather shoot her than help.

She walked down the yellow brick road. The air con, a steady hum pouring out of the wall vents, provided welcome relief from the heat.

Kasey stopped in front of a white paneled door near the front. Was this one of the bedrooms? Or was the bathroom? She put her ear to the door and couldn’t hear the hip-hop coming out of the other rooms.

Her hand trembled over the handle.

“Fuck it.”

She yanked the handle down and stormed inside, head down like a charging bull. Kasey stopped dead. The urge to pee vanished like it had been a trick of the brain, a biological mirage.

There was an assortment of colored flesh on display, bouncing around on the bed – white, black, brown flesh. Tits, asses and everything else that could be imagined. Kasey had just walked in on Jiggle City at rush hour. There were about five people crammed onto a single bed, all of them getting it on. Elsewhere, a naked thirty-something white man with a silver medallion hanging off his neck stood on the sidelines filming the action on a video camera.

The cameraman spotted Kasey and turned towards her, his thing dangling in midair. He grinned, showing off a set of Gollum-like teeth that turned Kasey’s blood to ice water.

“Want to join us?” he said.

Kasey slammed the door shut and raced up the yellow brick road, zipping past the supermodels at high-speed. She dived into the last booth and tucked her back up against the wall again.

“Fuck!” she said, staring down the aisle and praying to God that Gollum wouldn’t come after her.

“I’ve gotta get outta here.”

She jumped when she heard footsteps. But it wasn’t Gollum. After a second Kasey realized they were coming from the winding staircase that connected the upper and lower decks. A moment later, a handful of Secret Service men and women stepped off the stairs, onto the yellow brick road.

Grim expressions all round. Seemed like smiling was a deadly sin for these people.

Blaze appeared next, causing Kasey to shudder.

And last of all, President Rage.

Kasey leaned forward in her seat. She noticed a layer of white powdery dust under the President’s nose.

“How far to Sunset Strip Mickey?” Blaze asked, leaning his massive head towards the driver.

Mickey peered over the edge of the cabin.

“Five minutes sir.”

Rage stood in the aisle, fidgeting with the collar of his shirt. There was a disgruntled expression on his face. “Guess I have to talk to the voters again huh? Lucky me.”

“Yes sir,” Blaze said. He was watching the President’s collar-adjustment with fascination.

“Creep,” Kasey whispered, glaring at the big fucker. She’d never hated anyone in her life as much as she hated Blaze. And she didn’t even know him. She only knew that he was a child-snatching pedo and that she’d gladly cut his balls – which were probably the size of space hoppers – off given half a chance.

And he’d taken Kasey away from Axel. Now he was out there alone with no one to look after him.

“Hasn’t gone as well as I’d hoped Blaze,” Rage said. “I don’t understand, I really don’t. Those people out there are running for their lives. I thought they’d appreciate what we’re doing for them – trying to restore law and order and reel in chaos. Who knows? Maybe given the choice, the majority of human beings prefer anarchy.”

“Yes sir,” Blaze said.

“Keep your eyes out front,” Rage said, his hands moving from the collar to the knot on his tie. “The natives are getting restless.”

“I’ll take care of it sir,” Blaze said. “Don’t worry about a thing – you just concentrate on getting them to the election.”

“What would I do without you Blaze?”

“Yes sir. Thank you sir.”

Rage took the stairs and behind him, Blaze signaled for two Secret Service men to accompany the President onto the roof.

The Chief-of-Security glanced around the lower apartment. There was a puzzled expression on his face.

“Where’s Shirley Fontaine?” he asked. “Didn’t I see here on this bus earlier? It’s about time some of these goddamn actors and singers earned their keep around here. Have they forgotten why we brought them with us in the first place? The President needs stars at his side to look good. If they’re not making him look good then they’re a dead weight.”

Kasey’s ears pricked up. Shirley Fontaine was on Jaws? She was one of Hollywood’s most admired and enduring actresses, a forty-something woman who’d made the rare transition from youthful beauty to older, credible roles. She’d recently been nominated for an Oscar for her role as a one-legged frontierswoman in PegLeg. Kasey had loved that movie. She’d dragged the three boys to see it at the ArcLight and even though none of them would admit it she was sure they’d enjoyed it too. Especially Charlie. Such a sensitive boy.

She shook her head. Later.

One of the Secret Service agents, a squareheaded woman with a jawline as wide as her forehead, pointed towards the bedroom doors.

“Fontaine’s in one of those I think,” the squarehead said. “Screwing like it was the end of the world.”

Blaze growled.

“Pete!”

One of the black suits, a young man with sandy blond hair, scurried over to Blaze. Pete was around six foot tall with big linebacker shoulders. Even though he was probably about thirty he possessed the features of a fresh-faced kid straight out of high school.

“Yes sir,” he barked.

“Round up the high-profile trophies,” Blaze said. “Tell them to clean up and to get to work. We’re taking Sunset Strip in five minutes. C’mon people, we’ve got an election to win.”

“Yes sir!” Pete said.

Pete didn’t disappoint. He charged up and down the yellow brick road like he’d just installed fresh batteries up his ass. His giant fist slammed against the three bedroom doors, his voice battling against the thumping hip-hop.

“Time to go to work people!” he yelled. “Clothes on. Clean up. Your President needs you kissing his ass upstairs. I’m coming in there in one minute and I want to see you sodomites looking respectable for the American public.”

Pete then went upstairs and did exactly the same thing. The man was tireless. As all this was taking place, Blaze approached the Coca-Cola booth where Kasey was trying to remain unseen. He sat down opposite the girl and proceeded to crack his knuckles one after the other, which made Kasey visibly wince. She’d always hated that popping sound and he wondered if somehow he knew.

“Why am I here?” Kasey asked.

“You’re here because I saved your life,” Blaze said. “Didn’t you see what happened to all those other people on Melrose Avenue?”

He licked his lips thoroughly. Kasey had already noticed that Blaze had a habit of doing this a lot.

“You’re welcome by the way,” he said. “I could just as easily have shot you in the head.”

“Why didn’t you then?” Kasey asked.

“And mess up that pretty face?”

“Thanks a bunch,” Kasey said, dressing up her words in false bravado. “Can I go now?”

Blaze’s alabaster hand slid over the table. There was a bloodstained bandage wrapped around it and he grasped at Kasey with that bloody stump, a loathsome grin on his face.

Kasey’s arms shot off the table. “Don’t touch me you fucking creep or I’ll bite your fingers off.”

Blaze fell back into the seat, laughing. Both hands were pressed tight against his chest. Kasey eyed the bandage with the red stain and hoped that whatever had happened, it had hurt like hell.

“A little pushback,” Blaze said, wetting his lips again. “That’s so much more rewarding.”

“Fuck you,” Kasey said, feeling the anger swelling up. Outsized or not, she’d break this prick’s jaw if he tried anything.

“Sunset Strip!” Mickey called out from the driver’s seat.

Blaze leaned over the table and blew Kasey a kiss with his bad hand. “Got to get back to work honey. But it won’t be long till we see each other again.”

He stood up and walked down the yellow brick road. Then he climbed up the winding staircase to join Rage on the roof.

“Sick bastard,” Kasey said.

Pete had done a sterling job at rounding up the trophy celebrities. They’d pulled their clothes on and as Jaws slowed to a crawl on Sunset Strip the celebs were running around like worker bees who’d slept in on Monday morning.

“Upstairs!” Pete yelled. “To the roof.”

Kasey wandered over to the couch by the left-hand side window. Most of the supermodels and the other hangers on had vacated it thankfully, having been shepherded onto the roof.

The TV on the wall continued to broadcast chaotic images from around the nation. But Kasey didn’t pay any attention to the box. She looked through the window and watched it live.

Mickey slowed Jaws to a stop at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Clark Street, a stone’s throw from the legendary Whisky a Go Go music venue.

“Jesus,” Kasey said, taking in the view.

It was a mess out there. A thick fog drifted over Sunset Strip and Kasey figured it wasn’t a real fog, more like smoke. Dozens of abandoned cars littered the road – some of them on fire, some of them lying on their roofs as if they’d been flipped over by a pack of strongmen. Kasey saw the wheels still spinning on a freshly upturned Lincoln.

“My fellow Americans!” Rage’s voice boomed through the megaphone. “Don’t be shy. Come over here, let us talk.”

At first, Rage was talking to a mostly empty street. But a few minutes after Jaws’ arrival, a flock of shadowy figures began to emerge from the dark corners of the neighborhood. Some of them slipped out from behind the upturned cars. Others from inside blacked out buildings, pushing shopping carts in front of them.

They moved cautiously across the road towards Jaws. It filled up fast. Soon there were at least a hundred people, maybe more.

Kasey felt sick. At first she didn’t understand the sudden urge to puke but staring outside she realized what it was. This was Melrose Avenue all over again – a bigger crowd of people than they’d seen on the last two stops. What if they turned against the President too? What if they already had and this was a massacre waiting to happen?

With a heavy heart, Kasey pressed her nose against the glass, listening to Rage’s voice on the roof.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said many times over. “I know you’re scared and hurting. You’ve lost so much and haven’t we all?”

A pause.

“Let me on the bus!” a young woman screamed through a mask of tears. “For the love of God, I need to get off the street or they’re going to kill me. Let me on!”

Kasey saw her – a pretty blonde woman of about twenty, her dress ripped in several places and a fresh scar running down the side of her face. Her eyes were wide with terror.

“But we can’t allow ourselves to become victims,” Rage said, ignoring the woman’s plea. “We must take action to prevent anarchy and further bloodshed. Decisive action that might on the surface appear counter-intuitive, but will preserve this great nation of ours for years to come.”

Kasey sat downstairs, listening to the speech with a cold, empty feeling inside. The President was regurgitating the same verbal diarrhea he’d dropped over Melrose Avenue and all the other stops so far.

And as she’d suspected, the crowd wasn’t having it.

“GET US OUT OF HERE!”

“OPEN THE DOORS AND LET US IN!”

“I know it’s a strange time to call an election,” Rage said. “But thwarting anarchy must be our immediate priority now and we can only do that with a legitimate government in place. A legitimate government starts and ends with you the voters. I could take power, of course I could. But America is not a dictatorship and we will not – MUST NOT – descend into a lawless wasteland. If you vote for me tonight, I’ll bring America back to her feet. She’ll be strong and our enemies, who I swear have been routed, will be weak. Believe it or not, America will be stronger than ever before.”

“And so will you asshole!” a woman shouted at Rage. “Your ass is impeached, don’t think we’ll forget what you’ve got coming!”

“Why don’t you come down here and talk to us Rage? You want our votes but you won’t come down and shake our hands?”

Kasey heard a silence on the roof. The response from the crowd was swift.

“OPEN THE DOORS!”

“HELP US!”

Something struck the window and Kasey flinched. It was a small missile – a coin or a stone that flew over the huddle of angry bodies outside the Whiskey. It wasn’t the only one. In a matter of seconds it sounded like a flood of hailstones slamming into the side of Jaws.

Kasey realized that she was on the inside looking out. She was inside the safety of Jaws along with the politicians, the celebrities and supermodels. And they – the people – could see her. What must she have looked like to them?

She slid down on the couch a little, just enough to be less obvious.

The Secret Service, who’d gathered ahead of the crowd outside, tightened their protective wall around the top half of Jaws. They stood their ground, like a human bumper pointing pistols and rifles at the dissenters. By now the missiles had stopped and the most eager rebels amongst the crowd were pushing their way to the front, trying to get closer to Rage so that he could hear them.

“Don’t charge,” Kasey said, watching the angry mob inching closer to the Secret Service barrier. “Don’t charge us.”

There was a loud thud, followed by footsteps crashing along the upper deck. Kasey leaned her head back, following the noise as it approached the stairs.

“Goddamn idiots!” Rage said, storming downstairs. He paced back and forth like a man desperate for a fight. His tanned skin was yellowy-brown, the color of nicotine fingers. “These people want this country to turn into a lawless swamp.”

“Yes sir.”

Blaze shadowed the President’s every move.

Rage signaled to Mickey at the wheel. “I don’t think these people are voters Mickey. What do you say?”

Mickey’s laugh was shrill and terrible. Like a goblin’s laugh. He leaned his head over the cockpit door and saluted his boss.

“You saying what I think you’re saying Mr. President sir? You want me to bring out the big guns?”

Kasey shook her head. “No,” she whispered.

Rage was standing on the yellow brick road, deep in thought. “No,” he said. “Wait!”

“Wait?” Mickey said, turning his head around. “Shoot? Don’t shoot?”

“They’re anarchists sir,” Blaze said, his eyes pleading with Rage. “They’re anarchists standing in the way of democracy. The country doesn’t need people like that, not in the country you’re going to build starting tonight. When we took action on Melrose it was justified and I think the same applies here.”

Rage shook his head. “We can’t keep killing everyone Blaze,” he said in a quiet voice. “Or there’ll be nobody left to vote. That vote must come through or they’ll never accept me when they look back on what happened tonight.”

He paced back and forth with the air of a general running through the battle strategy in his mind.

“It must be legitimate.”

“What do I do sir?” Mickey asked. “They’re getting restless out there.”

Rage walked towards the driver’s cabin, hands thrust in pockets. He leaned forward. The crowd, particularly at the front, was still causing the Secret Service no end of trouble. Kasey took a closer look too. She noticed a man on the frontline with a long black beard, wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt. He was the one orchestrating the rebellion with gusto. The impromptu leader. He seemed impervious to fear, challenging the Secret Service to shoot him by lifting up his t-shirt and exposing his heavily tattooed chest.

“Looks like somebody wants to become a martyr,” Rage said.

When the SS didn’t shoot him, the bearded man cajoled the rowdiest rebels into bouncing up and down on their toes like soccer hooligans and hurling insults and death threats at the President.

The situation was hanging on a knife-edge. Meanwhile the burning cars in the background continued to crackle, heating up an already scorching hot Sunset Strip. The firelight cast a dull, menacing glow over the proceedings.

“Blaze,” Rage said, summoning his Chief-of-Security to his side.

“Sir?” Blaze asked, hurrying over.

Rage pointed towards the hostile frontline. “That big bastard over there. The one with the beard – see him?”

“I see him,” Blaze growled.

“Isolate him. Shoot anyone who tries to get in your way.”

“Yes sir,” Blaze said, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “May I ask what we’re picking him up for?”

“He wants to be a martyr,” Rage said, turning around slowly to face his number one. “So we’ll make him a martyr. Let’s show the good people of Hollywood what martyrs look like up close, shall we?”

Chapter 7

“Climb aboard guys,” Nolan said.

The two dogs standing on the street stared up at Nolan who was sitting in the driver’s cabin, dressed in full Kowalski gear. The dogs were lingering a few inches back from the steel ramp, which extended from Goliath’s doorway like a silver tongue.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

Just five minutes earlier, Nolan had found both dogs cowering in a coffee shop doorway on North Western Avenue.

Despite Axel’s protests about wasting time he’d slowed the MBT to a stop. Nolan had then opened the folding doors and lowered the ramp, hoping that the dogs wouldn’t freak out and run off. The ramp had originally been designed for loading heavy equipment on and off Goliath while on location. Nolan figured it would let the dogs ease their way onto the MBT, rather than making them jump the step, which might literally be a step too far considering how scared they were.

After that he’d called them over from the edge of the road. Nolan had stayed put in the driver’s cabin, doing his best not to make any sudden movements that would send them running. The dogs – two collies, one black and white, the other lilac and white, had responded to Nolan’s voice as if they knew him. As if there was something familiar about the way he talked to them. Nonetheless their approach was a cautious one. They crept low, hope and fear jostling for supremacy in dazzling bright eyes that reflected the fiery lights of Hollywood.

They waited at the base of the ramp.

“Good dogs,” Nolan said, staring through the front windshield. “C’mon. You don’t want to be out there tonight.”

Axel stood further back in the aisle. Nolan heard the boy fidgeting like someone in desperate need of a bathroom break.

“Nolan,” Axel said. “How long…”

“Shhhhhh.” Nolan said, pressing a finger against his lips. “Don’t scare them.”

“Yeah but…”

“Shhhh!”

Nolan reached into his back pocket and pulled out a handful of Diesel’s treats. Miniature dog cookies. Peanut butter flavor. He’d brought them to the Paramount party out of guilt, to make up for dragging Diesel out of the house and taking him to that godforsaken gathering.

The sandy, dry texture of the treats brought a lump to Nolan’s throat.

He quickly broke the cookies up and tossed the pieces onto the ramp. Most of the fragments rolled down onto the street.

The two dogs kept staring at Nolan.

“You guys come from a good home don’t you?” Nolan said, avoiding eye contact. “You want to trust people but you’re confused. Can’t blame you for that.”

Nolan leaned back in his seat. He closed his eyes and felt the vague sensation of exhaustion breaking into his mind like a burglar. Now that he’d stopped moving the thought of a long, dreamless sleep was tempting.

He opened his eyes, batting away all thought of rest.

“How long’s this going to take?” Axel said.

“As long as it takes.”

“Nolan, we really need to get moving if we’re…”

“Relax Axel. This ride rides at my pace, not yours.”

“Huh?”

“Axel. That’s an unusual name.”

“What?”

“I said that’s an unusual name – Axel.”

“I guess so,” Axel said. “My mom’s a big Guns ‘n’ Roses fan. Her claim to fame is that she can whistle all of Slash’s guitar solos. Every last one, every damn note. And some of those solos last for days man! I know all the songs, they were always on in our apartment when I was growing up. Yeah she’s the only black person I know who’s crazy for those old school white rock bands with the hair, heroin and screechy ass voices. So instead of calling me Slash, who’s half black by the way, she named me after all white Axl Rose. But guess what?”

“What?”

“She spelled it wrong. Couldn’t even get that right.”

Outside the dogs inched closer. They didn’t seem interested in the treats but maybe, Nolan hoped, they’d realized that it wasn’t so bad inside the bus. Or maybe they smelled the cats.

“You should go home Axel,” Nolan said. “You don’t know for sure that she’s gone. Nothing’s guaranteed tonight.”

There was a pause.

“My mom drinks gin like it’s water Nolan,” Axel said. “She’s been dead for years.”

“Keep your voice down kid.”

“Sorry.”

Nolan glanced over his shoulder. “You don’t care if she’s dead? Your own mother?”

Axel’s skinny arms hung loose at the sides. He stood in the center of the aisle, staring at the floor and shaking his head.

“She’s better off man. Liver failure ain’t quick, that’s for sure. It probably would’ve hurt a lot more.”

“You’re a weird kid,” Nolan said, turning back to the front.

Before Axel could respond, the lilac and white collie crept slowly up the ramp. She ignored the cookie crumbs as she turned into the aisle. The black and white dog, a big male by Nolan’s reckoning, watched his companion and then followed.

Nolan smiled behind the bandana. He continued to ignore the dogs and it worked. They moved warily past the stationary Axel as if he wasn’t there, approaching the apartment at the back. Their tails were low, almost trapped between their legs.

“Leave those cats alone guys,” Nolan said. “Axel, fill a bowl with water will you? There’s cold water in the fridge and the bowls are lying about somewhere. Just put it down on the floor for them all.”

“Sure.”

Nolan’s fingers skipped over the dashboard, pulling up the ramp. Afterwards the double doors folded shut.

He was about to drive off when he heard a strange noise at his back.

Nolan turned around and peered down the aisle. Further back he saw Axel sitting on the couch, using both hands to pour the contents of a large bottle of Evian into a glass bowl on the floor.

The kid was laughing.

“What the hell?” Nolan said.

Axel realized Nolan was watching him. It only made him laugh even harder.

That kid is weird, Nolan thought. Seconds ago they’d been talking about his maybe-dead mother. Now he was laughing like an idiot.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Axel called out. He shook his head. “It’s nothing. It’s stupid, just forget it man. This heat’s driving me crazy that’s all.”

He filled the water bowl and pointed to the two dogs who’d been following his progress closely. The two cats were perched on a booth table, watching events unfold from up high.

“Spill it kid,” Nolan said. “And I don’t mean the water.”

Axel nodded.

“Didn’t the animals come in two by two on Noah’s Ark?” he said. “You got two cats, two dogs and a fire flood outside. What’s next? Two elephants? Two Mexicans?”

He was laughing all over again.

“Jesus,” Nolan said, turning back to the front.

“Nah,” Axel said. “Not Jesus. You’re cool and all Nolan but you ain’t quite at the Jesus level yet.”

Nolan put his foot down. If he revved Goliath’s engine hard enough he’d drown the kid’s voice out.

The silver MBT sailed along North Western at sixty miles per hour. Nolan stared through the windshield, every bit as focused as a hawk circling over a large wheat field in search of mice. He didn’t dare blink. The burned out cars, ransacked stores, the flaming apartment buildings – he drank in every last drop of scenery, discarding whatever was fruitless.

A couple of times Nolan thought he saw MBT tracks on the asphalt. He stopped and went outside but on both occasions it turned out to be a mirage.

There were still people chasing after Goliath, trying to get themselves and their families off the street. At one point, eight black people stormed onto the road, barely avoiding a collision with the giant steel bumper and the machete spears. Nolan swerved past them, honking the horn. He checked the side mirror as he put distance between them. They watched him go, a haunted look on their faces. This time nobody called after him.

Nolan drove faster, an ever-tightening knot in his guts.

Meanwhile Axel was hovering in the aisle, next to the driver’s cabin. Nolan could feel the boy’s stare on the back of his head. It was as hot as a laser beam.

“Did you see how scared they were?” Axel asked.

“Don’t,” Nolan said. “There’s no vacancy for a conscience on this bus. So save your breath.”

“But did you see?”

“Yeah I saw,” Nolan said. “Trust me Axel, if the shoe was on the other foot they wouldn’t have stopped for us either.”

“You don’t know that,” Axel said, creeping closer to the cabin.

“I know.”

One of the dogs barked up the back. Underneath that, Nolan heard a long, sinister cat growl.

“No fighting,” he yelled.

The noise stopped.

Nolan turned his attention back to the road. When he glanced over his shoulder, Axel was still standing there. He had that same pathetic look in his big eyes.

“Christ!” Nolan snapped. “What’s with you kid? There’s a luxury apartment up there man, you know? You see that? A nice comfortable couch, some funky-looking booths, food and drink and a TV on the wall. And yet you’d rather stand in the aisle searching for my guilt buttons?”

“They looked so scared,” Axel said.

“I didn’t do it because they were black,” Nolan said. “You know that right? I hate all people equally.”

“What’s going to happen to them?” Axel said. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

Nolan slowed Goliath down to fifty.

“I’m not a superhero Axel,” he said. “And I’m sure as hell as not Chuck Kowalski either. You’re old enough to know the difference between television and real life. Right? You realize what I’m doing here tonight? I’m going to kill a man. Two men. I’m going to take their lives – everything they have. And in order to get to them I’m probably going to have to kill a whole lot more. Men and women. Tonight, it makes no difference to me. You don’t want to see this kid. I don’t want you to see this. You’ve seen enough horror tonight already to give you nightmares for the rest of your life.”

“I’ve seen worse,” Axel said.

That made Nolan chuckle. “Tough guy huh?”

“Tough enough.”

“Right on,” Nolan said. “Well if you’re tough enough you don’t need me and Goliath to make it through the night do you?”

“I didn’t say that,” Axel said.

Nolan nodded. “Alright,” he said. “Why don’t we make a deal? As soon as you get your girlfriend back you’re on your own. You and her. That’s if she’s still alive when we find her.”

Nolan regretted that last part. He grimaced under the stuffy bandana.

Axel whistled. “Wow,” he said. “It’s true what they say about you Nolan, isn’t it? You are an asshole. You really hate people don’t you? What’s that word I heard them say about you once? A misan…something.”

“Misanthrope.”

“Yeah,” Axel said. “I prefer the word asshole myself.”

Nolan pointed at the windshield. “Take a look outside kid. You see all that fire? Smell the smoke? We did that. That’s the human race in a nutshell. Born in the Garden of Eden, died in a junkyard.”

“Not everyone’s bad,” Axel said. “You’re stupid if you think they are man.”

Nolan laughed, slamming the horn several times and making it sound like Goliath was in on the joke.

“What’s so funny?” Axel said, his voice getting louder. “There are a shitload of good people out there and they don’t deserve this. They didn’t do anything.”

“That’s right,” Nolan said hitting the wheel. “They didn’t do anything. When this country was going down the toilet they did nothing about it. And here we are. I’ll tell you something kid – I’m through pretending to be civilized. Fuck it. When I’m done with Rage tonight you know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna grab a couple of six-packs, go up to the Hollywood Hills and watch it all go up in flames. Happy Birthday to me.”

It was a long time before Axel spoke.

“It’s your birthday?”

“Nah,” Nolan said. “I just made that last part up.”

Axel coughed, like he was preparing to give a speech.

“I don’t really think you’re an asshole Nolan,” he said. “Despite everything, I think you’re still a pretty decent guy and all. I wouldn’t be here if you weren’t. And I dig your work man – that much is true. I read all your interviews and stuff.”

“Those interviews are worthless,” Nolan said, staring onto an empty road. “I don’t give those asshole journalists anything. They don’t care about the truth anyway, only the story.”

“Yeah I hear that.”

Nolan peered over the edge of the cabin. “Wanna know something most people don’t know about me?”

Axel’s face lit up. “Sure.”

Nolan’s eyes went back to the road. “I’m a quarter Chinese. Did you know that?”

“For real?”

“Yeah,” Nolan said, laughing softly. “For real. My mom’s mom was originally from Hong Kong.”

“You don’t look a quarter Chinese.”

“Don’t have to look Chinese to be a quarter Chinese,” Nolan said.

He reached for the dash and turned on the air con for the first time since he’d climbed into Goliath that night. It was hot under the Kowalski costume.

Cold air blew through the vents. Nolan lowered the bandana, welcoming the draught onto his face.

“When I was about eleven,” he said, “it got out at school that I had Chinese blood in my veins. I don’t know how it got out but kids being kids, they decided to make a big deal of it. So they called me names. I was the blond haired, blue-eyed chink. I was a shy kid too. Tall, but built like a piece of string. The other kids were cowards like all bullies. They’d follow me in groups when I was walking home from school, taunt me and then beat the shit out of me when I ignored them. That went on for a long time.”

Axel tilted the Dodgers cap towards the back of his head. “Hard to imagine,” he said. “You getting bullied and all.”

“It happened,” Nolan said. “It was the bullying that led me to martial arts in the first place. I read somewhere that a wise man once said ‘fear is a friend of exceptional people.’ Well I was scared and unexceptional. So I decided to turn that around by making friends with fear. I channeled its energy into becoming something else. In a way, becoming someone else. Just like when I put this costume on and step in front of the cameras I become someone else.”

“Who?” Axel said. “Who did you become back then?”

“The best fighter in the world,” Nolan said. “No bully would ever dare mess with that guy right?”

“Yeah,” Axel said. “But a lot of kids get bullied at school Nolan. They don’t all end up becoming misan–whatevers in later life.”

“Misanthropes.”

“Yeah.”

There was a short silence as Goliath rolled over a series of speed bumps.

“Hey Nolan,” Axel said.

“Yep.”

“Wasn’t there something else? Something else that made you like this?”

Nolan felt that knot in his guts biting again. Like it had shark teeth. “What are you saying Axel?”

Axel’s voice retreated further down the aisle. Sounded like the kid was backing off. “Wasn’t there a…wasn’t there a car crash? Like a really long time ago?”

Nolan’s body went as stiff as a board. “I don’t talk about that. Sorry.”

“Nah my bad man. I’m sorry.”

Nolan squeezed the wheel tight as Goliath drove past a block of stores on the right. He looked over that way. The building was cut like a U-shaped barracks with a car park in the center. There was a pharmacy, liquor store and several takeout joints amongst other things in the mini-mall. As the MBT drove past, three masked youths were hacking their way through the front window of a second-hand electronics store, using lead pipes and bats to break the glass. When they saw Goliath they stopped what they were doing and bounced up and down on their toes, throwing their arms in the air like they’d just seen Santa Claus swooping in to deliver their Christmas presents.

Nolan waved back. He kept his eyes on the looters as they turned their attention back to business, storming through the…

“LOOK OUT NOLAN!”

Axel’s voice wrenched Nolan’s attention back to the front.

“Holy shit!” he yelled.

Four people were standing in the middle of the road, waving their arms in a frantic bid to stop the incoming Goliath.

Nolan slammed his foot down on the brake pedal. Goliath shrieked as it skidded to an emergency stop in the middle of the road.

Axel yelped as he was thrown to the floor.

“Fucking idiots!” Nolan barked. “You okay kid?”

“Yeah,” Axel said, getting back to his feet. “I’m fine.”

Nolan stood up off the driver’s seat, leaning towards the windshield. “What the hell? Is it Halloween or something?”

The four people he’d almost turned into pancakes were dressed up in superhero costumes. The costumes were bizarre to say the least. They were colorful too and Nolan couldn’t help but sense there was something familiar about them.

There were three men and one woman standing outside. One of the men, whose head was capped with a giant bird beak, stood protectively in front of the woman. The woman, who was in her mid-twenties at most, had a horned helmet on her head and a long black cape, wrapped around her upper body. Nolan saw the hint of a reddish tunic and a coat of chain mail underneath the cloak. The other two men, one dressed all in black like a ninja, and the other with a bizarre combination of cowboy clothes and samurai armor, had also thrown themselves in front of the woman.

“You seeing this” Nolan asked. “Or did somebody put LSD into my drink earlier tonight?”

Axel’s face was now inches away from the glass. He put his hands out like he was reaching for them.

“I don’t believe it,” he said. “Is that…?”

“What?” Nolan asked.

A pause.

“Holeeeeee sheeeeiiit,” Axel said, his mouth hanging open. He was laughing again. “It is! It’s them Nolan it’s them! It’s the Retaliators – all four of them. Look it’s Eagle Boy, Typhoon, Cowboy Samurai and Viking Chick. Christ on a bike Nolan, you almost wiped out the most lucrative superhero movie franchise in history.”

“Uh-huh,” Nolan said.

“I wonder why they’re running around in their costumes,” Axel asked with a frown.

Nolan looked at his own outfit and shrugged. “Maybe these guys were at the Paramount party too,” he said. “Who knows? I wasn’t exactly paying much attention. And just maybe after the shit hit the fan they thought they had a better shot of flagging a ride dressed like…that.”

Axel’s eyes lit up. “Do they?”

“Nope.”

“Oh c’mon Nolan,” Axel said, pointing outside. “You can’t be serious man. You can’t leave the Retaliators out on the streets like that. They’re like Hollywood royalty man. The crazies will tear them to shreds just for fun. Like literally man!”

Nolan was only half-listening. He made a sweeping gesture with his hand, signaling to the four people on the road.

“Get out the way!”

There was no response. The Retaliators stood out there like statues, like rabbits caught in Goliath’s tractor beam headlights. They were staring towards the cabin with wide, pleading eyes.

“Ah c’mon!” Nolan yelled, falling back into his seat. He hit the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “Shit, what is it with these guys? Do they want me to plow straight through them or what?”

Eagle Boy, whose costume also boasted a giant set of white angel-like wings sprouting out at the back, stepped forward. His clean-cut, handsome face was vaguely familiar to Nolan.

“Please,” he called, arms outstretched at both sides. The wings at his back twitched with his every move. “Will you help us?”

Nolan revved the engine. “Get off the road bird shit.”

“We need to talk to you,” Eagle Boy said, walking towards Goliath. As he left the group to approach Goliath, Typhoon and Cowboy Samurai stayed with Viking Chick. “Please, it’s not safe out here and we’re desperate. We need to get off the road and with good reason. If you’ll just let me talk to you for a minute I’ll explain everything.”

“Fuck off,” Nolan growled.

His foot caressed the gas pedal, edging Goliath forward at a crawl. As the MBT began to roll towards the Retaliators, Nolan slammed the horn again, this time pounding it with a hammer fist. The MBT belched an angry warning.

But the Retaliators stood their ground.

“What the hell are you doing Nolan?” Axel said. His fast-blinking eyes skipped back and forth between Nolan and the four superheroes turned human roadblock.

“You can’t kill The Retaliators man – it’s the Retaliators for God’s sake!”

“Never tell me what I can and can’t do Axel,” Nolan said.

He put pressure on the gas and Goliath picked up the pace. The gap between the MBT and the superheroes decreased further.

“Who needs a sixteenth Retaliator movie anyway?” Nolan said. “If you ask me I’ll be doing the world a favor.”

Eagle Boy let out a scream that was appropriately bird-like. He backed off towards his companions and at the same time the two dogs in the back began to bark furiously.

“Nolan!” Axel said. “Stop for God’s sake man, you’re going to go straight through them.”

Nolan was firm on one thing in his mind. The Retaliators would either get off the road or they’d get crushed under the wheels of Goliath. No vacancies for a conscience, he told himself. Remember? These assholes were in his way, blocking his path towards Rage.

And tonight that was unforgivable.

“Have it your way,” he said, narrowing his eyes.

He slammed his foot down and Goliath roared. Then he touched the brake quickly, bringing the MBT to a halt.

“Final warning,” Nolan said. “I’m not holding back next time.”

Outside, Typhoon and Eagle Boy stepped aside. That left a terrified-looking Cowboy Samurai standing in the middle of the road beside Viking Chick. The two of them were directly in Goliath’s path.

“Stop!” a voice from outside yelled. “Please stop!”

“No,” Nolan said.

He was about to floor it again when Cowboy Samurai reached over and pulled away the cloak wrapped around Viking Chick’s body. He was like a magician, revealing the final part of a magic trick.

“Goodnight assholes,” Nolan said. He hit the gas and Goliath charged towards the Retaliators.

Then Nolan saw the bump on her belly.

“STOP!” Axel screamed.

Chapter 8

Kasey couldn’t take her eyes off the dying man.

He was hanging ten meters off the ground in the shadow of the Whisky a Go Go. The rope squeezing his neck had been fastened around the lower of two metal beams jutting out from a tall streetlight, just a stone’s throw from the Whisky’s front door. Above his head a set of traffic lights went through the motions of a normal day.

The Rolling Stones logo on the man’s t-shirt expanded and contracted as he put his whole body behind the struggle for one more breath. His legs kicked furiously and he spat out a series of choking noises. Kasey couldn’t stand it. Death, which had been rampant all night, was taking its time.

The crowd on Sunset Boulevard watched in shocked silence. They’d been rowdy enough as the Secret Service had weeded out the bearded troublemaker but despite all the insults and posturing, no one had intervened at the man’s arrest. No one stood up, no one said a thing. Kasey’s opinion was that some part of them still clung to the idea of authority and the fear of consequences that would come after them on the day after. The sharp suits, the guns – that made a difference didn’t it? Why else would they have allowed this to happen to the bearded man?

The revolution had fizzled out.

The crowd had no choice but to stick around and listen to Rage. The Secret Service had encircled the now tepid mob, repositioning themselves on the outskirts and shepherding the public closer to Jaws and also to the streetlight with the lifeless silhouette dangling from it.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Rage said, addressing the crowd through the megaphone. His tone was blunt and to the point. “You all witnessed how this man behaved tonight. He was a hate-stirrer. This man didn’t want to be part of a democracy. This man didn’t want to rebuild, he wanted anarchy and in my mind and in the mind of anyone who loves America, that makes him as dangerous as the fighter jets dropping bombs on our heads.”

A handful of people applauded.

“This man made his choice,” Rage said. “Now it’s time ladies and gentlemen, to make yours. Whose side are you on? Are you on my side? Will you help reconstruct this beautiful country of ours? Ask yourself this - what do you want to see when you wake up in the morning? Do you want to see a once proud, majestic nation tearing itself apart from the inside? Or do you want to see a strong, unified America again? Even better, even stronger than the one before? I can promise you the latter if you vote for me tonight. I will not seize power like a tyrant. The choice is yours to make. This is what I guarantee – America will rise from the ashes one way or another. But what that new America looks like, only you can decide.”

He pointed a finger to the sky.

“I urge you my fellow Americans. Go to Hollywood Boulevard tonight and vote.”

A sea of blank faces gawped at Rage.

“Go now,” Rage said, sounding impatient. “Right now. Start walking and keep in large groups for your own safety. Tell everyone you meet what happened here and what they have to do.”

Nobody in the crowd moved.

“Go I said!” Rage yelled.

The cold whirring noise on the other side of the glass made Kasey flinch. For a moment it sounded like she was on an airplane, listening to the extension of the slats and flaps in preparation of landing.

She saw the gun barrels on both sides of Jaws being thrust forward.

“Oh shit,” Kasey whispered. “No, not again. Please. Move you idiots. Move.”

The Secret Service marched around the perimeter, signaling to the people that they could go. Having also noticed the gun barrels turning towards them, the crowd was more than willing to listen. The distraught citizens hurried away, retreating from the grim shadow of the Whisky a Go Go. They set off in packs, murmuring amongst themselves as they walked over the endless shards of of broken glass that covered the road.

The bearded man stayed behind, hanging as a warning to all future dissenters.

“Don’t forget to vote Rage,” the President said.

Chapter 9

Nolan stood at Goliath’s door, staring down at the four Retaliators. A stony expression was hidden behind his bandana.

The superhero actors were huddled close together, waiting at the entrance for permission to climb aboard.

“No,” Nolan said.

“Let them in for God’s sake,” Axel said, hovering at Nolan’s back. “Lower the ramp will you?”

“No.”

“Please,” Typhoon said, peeling back his ninja balaclava to reveal a smooth-skinned boyish face. “We’ve got nowhere else to go. For Christ’s sake man we’ve got a pregnant woman here and you’re driving a monster truck here. You’ve got plenty of room don’t you?”

“Monster Bus-Tank,” Viking Chick said, correcting her companion. “Goliath is a Monster Bus-Tank.”

Typhoon shrugged. “Whatever Lisa. We need to get you off the street before these lunatics out here rip you to shreds.”

Viking Chick was mostly silent as Typhoon and the others continued to plead their case with Nolan. She was a stunning woman, about twenty-five with long auburn braids that stretched down her back. The horned helmet on her head was ridiculous, Nolan thought, as well as historically inaccurate. He wondered why she hadn’t tossed the damn thing yet, especially if she didn’t want to stand out.

Fucking actors.

“It’s okay,” she said, cutting off the other Retaliators pleading their case. She glanced at Nolan for a moment. Then she turned to back to her companions.

“It’s not fair,” she said. “We’re asking people to trust a bunch of weird-looking strangers, to let us on board their sanctuaries. I get it, I do. This is their safe place. Would we be so quick to open our doors to strangers on a night like this? In my condition, probably not.”

She began to walk away, encouraging the others to follow. The three male Retaliators watched her go with horrified expressions.

“We can’t just give up,” Cowboy Samurai said, calling after her.

“Lisa,” Eagle Boy said, turning around. As he moved his wings swatted Cowboy Samurai in the face. “We’re never going to get a better chance than this. You understand? That’s why we didn’t run, not even when this guy almost went straight through us. We need this.”

“Nolan!” Axel said. He came over and started tugging on Nolan’s arm. With a grunt, Nolan yanked his arm free and glared at the boy.

“Don’t do that,” he said.

“You can’t just let her go man,” Axel said, pointing towards the receding figure of Viking Chick. “She’ll die. Her baby will die for God’s sake. You want that on your conscience?”

Nolan couldn’t look the kid in the eyes. He watched Viking Chick, a tall, graceful figure (apart from that fucking helmet!) fading into the crazy night. It smelled like the inside of an ashtray out there. How much smoke had she inhaled so far? How much smoke had the baby breathed in?

“WAIT!”

She kept walking.

“I said wait.”

Viking Chick stopped and turned around. Both hands cradled the bump hidden under her cloak.

Nolan went over to the driver’s cabin. He leaned over the dashboard and slammed the ramp release button.

“Get in.”

The metal ramp lowered and a visibly relieved Eagle Boy hurried back to Viking Chick, took her arm and escorted her inside the bus. Typhoon and Cowboy Samurai followed.

“Thank you,” Viking Chick said as she passed Nolan. She reached out and squeezed his arm, causing him to shiver.

Christ, why was everyone touching him all of a sudden?

The others also mumbled their thanks as the four Retaliators gathered awkwardly in the aisle. They took a quick look around, their eyes soaking up the luxurious interior of Goliath.

“Up the back,” Nolan said, wafting them away like a bad smell. “Go into the apartment and stay there. And stay quiet. That’s the rules and if you don’t like them you can walk.”

“Sure thing,” Eagle Boy said.

The Retaliators made their way towards the back of the bus. The collies and cats, who had seemingly made peace with each other at last, watched from a variety of strategically selected vantage points – comfortable couches and tabletops – as these newcomers invaded their turf.

The lilac and white collie jumped off the couch and trotted over towards Viking Chick, who extended her hand in greeting.

“Aww he’s sweet,” Viking Chick said, rubbing the dog’s back. “Aren’t you baby? Are you a good boy?”

“A good girl,” Nolan said, admiring her confidence with the dog. “The other one’s a boy. The two cats are both male. They’re brothers I think, judging by the resemblance.”

Eagle Boy’s wings twitched. “Did they have to beg to get on the bus too?” he asked.

“Nope.”

Viking Chick straightened back up with a sigh. She wrapped her cloak tighter around her body, partially concealing the baby bump.

“I’m a big fan of the show,” she said, smiling down the aisle at Nolan. “Your costume, especially now that I’ve seen it up close, kicks ass. So much better than the bargain basement crap we have to wear you know? Although I have to say, the inside of Goliath isn’t quite how I remember it on the show. It’s like a hotel in here.”

“It’s great isn’t it?” Axel said, standing halfway down the aisle in between Nolan and the Retaliators. All his heroes under one roof, all dressed in costume. The kid was glowing like a sugar junkie in a candy shop.

“It’s like a luxury apartment, only much, much cooler.”

Eagle Boy turned to Nolan. His face was grim

“What the hell happened tonight?”

Nolan found it hard to take the bird shit man seriously. Half the guy’s face was buried inside a giant bird head.

“I don’t know,” Nolan said.

“Are we at war?” Typhoon asked. “Is this Pearl Harbor all over again or some shit like that?”

“It’s an inside job,” Axel said, speaking up. “The American government man – they did this. We’re pretty sure of it.”

Typhoon frowned. “Are you high kid?”

Axel shook his head. “No.”

“Tell you what,” Nolan said, cutting in. “Why don’t you guys talk about it up the back and I’ll do the driving. Time to hit the road.”

Nolan stood beside the cabin, watching these five strangers settling down in the apartment. Viking Chick took the couch, which offered plenty of room to lie down and stretch. Nolan shook his head. How did this happen? How had Nolan turned into a glorified Uber driver for four fake superheroes and a skinny black kid who wouldn’t shut the fuck up?

The dogs and cats were okay. He’d invited them on board.

“First chance I get,” Nolan said, climbing behind the wheel. “You guys are out of here. This ride’s only temporary, got it?”

He leaned his head over the cabin door, pointing at Axel.

“That goes for you too kid. Once you get your girlfriend back I’m setting you both down somewhere.”

Nolan might as well have slapped the boy on the cheek.

“Sure,” Axel said in a meek voice.

“That’s fine,” Viking Chick said, both hands still guarding the baby bump. “We appreciate the help Butch.”

“Call me Nolan.”

“Sure thing.”

“Hey mister,” Cowboy Samurai said, raising his hand as if he wanted to ask the teacher a question. “I mean, hey Nolan.”

“What’s your problem?” Nolan asked, turning around again.

Cowboy Samurai – or rather the actor who played him – was a Japanese-American with the ripped veiny arms of a gym junkie. He sported a neat Fu Manchu mustache and wore a black Stetson, which was tilted at a slight angle on his head. In the movies he was a gun-slinging samurai, as deadly with a six-shooter as he was with a razor sharp katana. The studio made a racket with all the Retaliator merchandise but Cowboy Samurai was definitely the fan’s favorite when it came to making money outside the Retaliator films. Apart from the usual merchandise options he’d already made at least three spinoff movies apart from the others. The bastard’s face was everywhere – on posters, on buses, on TV – but Nolan still couldn’t remember his name.

“I’m allergic to dogs,” Cowboy Samurai said, shrinking back from the lilac collie. “Do they have to be here?”

“The dogs were here first Cowboy,” Nolan said. “I’ll lower the ramp for you if you want to walk. Just say the word buddy.”

Cowboy Samurai frowned. “My name’s not buddy. It’s…”

“Don’t give a shit,” Nolan said, revving the engine over the sound of the man’s voice. “What’s the point of getting to know one another? We’ll be saying goodbye soon enough.”

Nolan double-checked the doors before setting off. As he did so he heard voices up the back talking about him.

“He’s a real charmer isn’t he?” Typhoon said.

“He’s pissed,” Axel said. “The President killed his dog.”

“Whaaaaaat?”

Nolan slammed his foot off the pedal. Goliath howled, drowning out the yappy voices at the back of the apartment. He sighed with relief. It felt good to be moving again. There was something soothing in the sensation of movement and it worked like a charm for Nolan. Movement was his sedative, slowing down the constant flow of anger. Who was it that once said angry men were blind and foolish? Nolan didn’t know but he suspected whoever said it was right. He had to control his emotions tonight, at least until he caught up with the dog killer and his people.

Nolan’s ears pricked up.

Was that music?

He looked right and left, fishing for clues about the sudden noise. Moments later, a large vehicle shot by at the bottom of the road where Western joined onto Santa Monica Boulevard. It was only there for a few seconds before it disappeared again. Nolan leapt forward in the driver’s seat like he’d sat on a tack. He digested snippets of moving information as he saw them – the ocean blue exterior, bloated wheels spinning over the Hollywood asphalt, and crude banners draped down the side and fluttering in the breeze.

There was something else – a small crowd of people walking alongside the vehicle. Doing their best to keep up with the blue MBT.

“It’s Kong!” he said, hitting the steering wheel. “Holy shit it’s Kong!”

In his excitement, Nolan’s foot accidentally scuffed the brake. Goliath briefly kangaroo-hopped down the middle of the road before he got it together.

“Sorry about that,” he said to no one in particular.

Axel sprinted down the aisle, taking up his familiar spot beside the driver’s cabin. He stared through the windshield but Kong and the people following it were gone, having moved off in a westerly direction along Santa Monica Boulevard.

Nolan could still hear the music. Barely.

“Are you sure?” Axel asked. “That was Kong?”

“Sure I’m sure,” Nolan said. “And that music – you hear it?”

Axel’s face wrinkled up in concentration. “I think so.”

“That’s Kong.”

Nolan turned to Axel, pointing a thumb back towards the apartment. “Tell everyone to sit down and hold on tight. That goes for you too Axel. We’re going for a ride.”

The boy’s eyes were bright with excitement. “Aye aye Captain!”

Goliath charged towards Santa Monica Boulevard at full throttle.

Axel howled in protest. Nolan hadn’t given the boy any time to run safely back to the apartment before hitting the gas and bringing Goliath up to light speed. Now Axel clung to the railing with both hands, working hard to stay upright. He wasn’t complaining.

“Sit down and hold onto something!” Axel yelled to the Retaliators in the apartment.

“Good boy,” Nolan said.

Nolan swung a hard left at the end of the road. The tires shrieked as the MBT’s massive bulk swerved, then straightened up again on Santa Monica Boulevard. Nolan hit the gas, gripping the steering wheel tight. His arms were as rigid as iron bars.

The music grew louder. And then there it was – the back of Kong in the distance, a giant slab of blue chrome, gleaming before a Hollywood half-cloaked in darkness, half lit up by a sea of fire.

Nolan’s body shivered in anticipation. Hadn’t it been Jezebeth Black who’d taken Kong out of Paramount? Black wasn’t Rage and in a sense, finding her was like winning second prize but it was a start. She might be able to pinpoint Rage’s location for Nolan, which would save him a hell of a lot of time driving around hoping for a break.

Jezebeth Black could’ve stopped Rage from killing Diesel. She could have done something but the old bitch had just stood there watching.

Kong was cruising at low speed. The admirers followed at both sides of the vehicle, singing along with the music and waving their arms in the air as if this was a mobile festival. Nolan wondered if those sing-along admirers were in fact terrified citizens begging Jezebeth Black for refuge.

Rock and roll spiraled from the MBT, drifting over the neighborhood. Leaning forward in the driver’s seat, Nolan saw the tiny shape of a man standing on Kong’s roof. He was dancing like an out of shape dad trying to embarrass his teenage daughter in front of her friends.

“That’s Run Baby Run by Tom Tremblay,” Axel said, fingers still gripping the handrail. “And that guy on the roof. That is Tom Tremblay.”

“Go figure,” Nolan said.

He peered at the denim-clad rocker. Tom Tremblay was an iconic, blue-collar rock and roll singer whose successful career had spanned five decades and was still going strong. Tremblay had never been quiet when it came to politics, neither in life nor song, and his support of Jezebeth Black was well known even amongst casual music fans.

“Was Tremblay at the Paramount party?” Axel asked.

“Don’t know,” Nolan said.

“Yeah he was,” Viking Chick called out from the back. “I spoke to him for a while. Nice guy actually.”

Goliath raced after Kong. As the gap closed Goliath’s snarling engine blotted out the music. At last, the people on the street realized something big was happening. When they turned their heads around they saw exactly what was coming after them.

Heads turned. People pointed at the silver giant and words were exchanged.

Nolan was surprised when the crowd cheered Goliath at first, summoning the MBT closer. They must have thought it was another part of Black’s mobile carnival.

Nolan slammed the horn and soon the cheers turned into screams. The penny had dropped on Sunset Boulevard.

Kong sped up in response, leaving a trail of confused and frightened people in its wake. So much for loyalty to the voters. On the roof, Tom Tremblay fell flat onto his stomach.

Nolan pushed forward, seeing nothing but the blue MBT in front of him. The target was inside Kong.

“Jesus Christ!” Eagle Boy yelled. He appeared beside Axel, next to the cabin door. “Back off for God’s sake Nolan. Are you trying to kill all those people out there?”

“Don’t tell me how to drive bird shit,” Nolan said.

Outside, groups of terrified people tried to dodge Goliath. They scattered on the road like ants running from a lawnmower, moving in all directions, which made it trickier for Nolan to avoid hitting them. He frantically steered Goliath left and right through the gaps, missing some of them by inches.

Screams filled the air.

“Take it easy Nolan!” Typhoon said.

“Listen,” Eagle Boy screamed, his face glistening with sweat under the bird cap. “There’s a pregnant woman back here and we need to take it…”

Nolan hammer-fisted the steering wheel. But his eyes stayed on the road.

Eagle Boy took the hint. When he spoke again, he tried using a calm voice.

“Okay,” he said. “I get it. Axel told us about your dog but those people on the road back there had nothing to do with that. Okay? Are you going to kill hundreds of innocent people if it means getting your revenge? Are you willing to do that Nolan?”

Nolan wasn’t paying attention. He saw Tom Tremblay hanging on for dear life on the roof of Kong. With a smile hidden under the bandana, Nolan brought Goliath closer to the back end of the blue MBT, pushing the steel bumper closer.

The audio of Run Baby Run cut out. The sound of Goliath and Kong hurtling down Santa Monica Boulevard was the only music now.

Nolan yanked the steering wheel to the left. Goliath switched lanes, accompanied by a spurt of loud barking from the two collies in the back. He put the pedal to the floor, pushing Goliath’s diesel turbine engine to the limit. The silver MBT pulled level alongside Kong.

“Hold on!” Nolan yelled to his passengers.

He jerked the wheel to the right, ramming Kong hard on its left side. There was a delicious, crunching noise as chrome sliced chrome. This was followed by a high-pitched scream from Kong’s roof. Nolan glanced up just in time to see the denim blur of Tom Tremblay falling overboard.

“No!” Axel howled over the sound of barking dogs. “Did you just kill Tom Tremblay?”

Nolan shrugged. “Get back in your seat Axel, I won’t tell you again.”

Reluctantly, Axel disappeared down the aisle.

Nolan looked to his right and saw a gallery of horrified faces pressed up against both the lower and upper deck windows of Kong. He saw SS, politicians and all the celebrities who’d hitched a ride at the Paramount party. Every last one of them had probably watched Diesel die in the parking lot.

They were all staring at Goliath as if it was Hell on wheels.

Nolan couldn’t see Black, but she was in there. Somewhere.

The black gun barrels on Kong shuddered into life. The left barrel stretched itself out, turning towards the speeding Goliath.

“They’re going to shoot!” Cowboy Samurai screamed. “Nolan! They’re going to shoot us for God’s sake! Back off.”

“Heads down!” Nolan barked.

Axel and the Retaliators dropped to the floor with a sharp thud. Seconds later, Kong unleashed a volley of ferocious machine gun fire at Goliath’s right side. Nolan slammed the brakes, dropping back into the left-hand lane. Kong’s gun followed its target and only stopped shooting when Goliath had slipped back into the right lane, taking up position behind Kong, safely out of firing range.

“Holy shit,” somebody yelled from the back. “What are we doing?”

“Stay down,” Nolan said. “This isn’t over.”

Nolan kept Goliath at Kong’s rear, pondering his next move. The windows on all the MBTs were bulletproof but that didn’t mean they were impenetrable. There was already a significant crack on Goliath’s right side window. At close range, anything was possible.

Or maybe they’d try to shoot out the tires next.

“Think,” Nolan said. “Think damn it.”

As he stared at Kong his eyes wandered back to the empty roof where five minutes ago, Tom Tremblay had been miming his greatest hits.

“Think.”

The idea hit Nolan like a slap in the face.

He didn’t bother to think it over. Instead he followed the nudge of instinct, pushing Goliath back into the left-hand lane and bringing its massive silver chrome alongside Kong once again.

“Hi,” Nolan said, waving at Kong’s frightened spectators.

Kong was shooting again. The bulletproof glass on Goliath’s right side withstood the initial blast but Nolan saw the cracks forming and fast. At this range, the bulletproof sheets could only stand up to so much hell on earth firepower.

“Why aren’t you shooting back?” Axel asked. “Nolan! Shoot dammit!”

“Don’t shoot!” Cowboy Samurai said. “Get us out of here.”

Nolan didn’t respond to any of them. He glanced up at Kong’s roof again, ready to gamble on the possibility that Tremblay had left the sunroof open during his concert for Jezebeth.

It was a gamble. But if it was open then it was an opportunity to launch a surprise counter attack.

“Nolan!” Eagle Boy called out from the back. “Pull back for God’s sake. We’re getting creamed out here man. Lisa’s pregnant remember?”

Nolan’s eyes scanned the dashboard, his finger scrolling along the display panel. This was the weapons dash and Nolan was searching for the little oval-shaped icon that highlighted Goliath’s supply of smoke bombs. When Nolan found it he held his finger down over the icon and a flashing red light appeared. This light signaled that a panel on Goliath’s roof was sliding open.

“C’mon,” he said, pulling Goliath back a little to avoid sitting directly in the line of fire.

There was a shrill, whining noise above his head.

Nolan watched the 3D simulation on the dash – it was an electronic reconstruction of what was unfolding elsewhere on Goliath. The mechanical dispenser arm on the roof was at present emerging from the upper deck panel, unfolding a set of steel fingers – the claw. This steel claw was carrying a Grade One smoke bomb.

The 3D display flashed, indicating that the set up maneuver was complete.

Nolan lowered his bandana and sucked in a hit of cool air. He’d launched smoke bombs at targets before on the show but this time it wasn’t scripted.

He pushed the gas pedal.

Goliath rolled up alongside Kong. This time Nolan fired Goliath’s right gun, hoping that it would cover his ploy to line up the steel claw. There was little chance that the SS man behind the wheel or anyone on board Kong would suspect what Nolan was doing. These people didn’t know the MBTs – didn’t know everything they were capable of.

Goliath and Kong drove side-by-side, exchanging gunfire like two old warships on the high seas.

Nolan heard a beep on the dashboard. The steel claw was fully extended and ready to launch.

“Alright,” he said.

Nolan opened up the targeting display. He gripped the black joystick, his eyes darting back and forth between the road and the navigation panel, which was a blur of speed, distance and accuracy predictors.

He targeted the steel claw using the simulation screen. One hand was on the wheel, the other on the joystick. He knew he was going too fast but he couldn’t slow down, not if he wanted to stay in line with the fleeing Kong.

The target was locked.

Nolan’s thumb kissed the launch switch.

“Work dammit.”

He released a series of smoke bombs in rapid-fire succession. Three loud beeps told Nolan that the bombs had been evacuated. With this confirmation, he touched the brakes, pulling Goliath back out of the firing line. But this time Nolan kept the MBT in the left lane.

He watched and waited.

A second later, Kong jerked backwards on the road.

“Yes!”

Nolan pumped a fist in the air.

The blue MBT swerved left and right in a frantic rhythm that was picking up speed fast. Nolan put his foot to the floor, bringing Goliath alongside its little brother vehicle. He looked to his right. Clouds of smoke gushed out of Kong’s open windows. The MBT was a thick fog on the inside, rendering it a time bomb on wheels.

Nolan tapped the brakes, pulling Goliath out of harm’s way.

About ten seconds later, Kong took a sudden right, careering off Santa Monica Boulevard and bouncing over the grounds of a Shell gas station. The blue MBT missed the first row of pumps by inches but seconds later crashed into the station building, which brought the smoky joyride to a sudden and violent halt. The station window shattered under the impact, sending fragments of glass spraying in all directions.

Nolan slammed the brakes, bringing Goliath to a stop in the middle of the road. He sat there for a minute, staring over at Kong on the other side of the street. He felt pity for the vehicle itself, which spat grayish-black smoke from its battered hood.

“I think we were safer taking our chances on the streets,” Cowboy Samurai said, fanning his sweaty face with his Stetson.

“Oh my God,” Viking Chick said, walking down the aisle in slow motion. Her mouth was hanging open but she was kind of smiling. “I was scared shitless but that was incredible.”

“Smoked ’em out,” Nolan said, leaping over the cabin door. He stretched his limbs, which cracked in unison.

“What do we do now?” Axel asked, following Viking Chick to the front.

“You do nothing,” Nolan said, turning to face the small group. “The smoke bomb was the easy bit but this thing isn’t over.”

Axel shook his head.

“They’ve got Secret Service guys on that bus Nolan,” he said. “With guns and shit. We don’t have guns.”

Nolan pointed towards the wreck in the Shell station.

“Don’t worry kid,” he said. “We’ve got them on the back foot. Look, they haven’t even tried to come outside yet and Kong’s filling up with more smoke than you can imagine right now. They can’t see shit, they can hardly breathe and they’re still not rushing outside – you know why? Black’s orders. Because she doesn’t want to risk losing the MBT to us. Without that, she’s screwed. Without Kong she’s just an old woman walking through a madhouse without bars.”

Nolan smiled.

“But they will come out.”

He hit the door release and walked away. Axel’s skinny arm shot out and grabbed Nolan’s wrist.

“But they’ve got guns Nolan. Guns.”

“Don’t worry,” Nolan said, gently removing Axel’s hand from his wrist. “I’ll bring some back.”

He jumped off the step and marched across the deserted street.

All the windows had been opened in Kong. They were desperate in there, doing everything they could to save their asses. If they could release the smoke from the inside without getting out they had a chance of keeping their fortress on wheels.

But Nolan knew that wasn’t the end of it. They’d have to come out and check the engine to assess the damage. There was no guarantee that Kong would just roll out of Dodge after a meaty smash like that.

He didn’t have to wait long.

When the doors hissed open a giant cloud of smoke gushed from the doorway. Kong had just puked a king-sized fog over Hollywood.

Jezebeth Black’s personal security team, who were all Secret Service, stormed out of the bus, coughing and choking into the back of their hands.

The smoke chased the SS outside, drifting towards Santa Monica Boulevard like an evil presence. The Shell station quickly became a blurry haze in its wake, offering little in the way of visibility.

Nolan crept through the fog. He was all over the SS as they hurried outside. They couldn’t see him, couldn’t hear him over the sound of their choking. Nolan sent the first one down with a stiff right to the jaw. He ran into the next man and did the same. Nolan knew exactly where to hit a man in order to turn his lights out with one shot. The chin – the chin was key to bouncing the brain inside the head. With just the right amount of force and precision the knockout was guaranteed every single time. It was even better when they didn’t see the punch coming.

“He’s in here!” an SS voice yelled. “He’s in the station.”

Nolan was in full flow. He knocked out one, two, three, four of the SS. But when more ran outside Nolan was forced to take a backwards step. Men in black suits, armed with pistols, charged blindly into the smoke. Some of them shot wildly, hoping to win the lottery.

“Kill that bastard!”

Nolan maintained a low posture, knees bent as he dodged gunfire.

Somebody grabbed him on the shoulder.

“You lousy bastard,” an infuriated voice spat.

Nolan spun around. He grabbed the wrist attached to the hand and with his other hand, snapped the three middle fingers back as far as they went. There was a loud crack. Small joint manipulation – that’s what they called it back in his fighting days. Illegal in sports, highly effective in life or death situations.

The SS man screamed. Nolan head-butted him in the face, sending him down stiff like a falling tree.

Nolan was like a violent ballet dancer, pirouetting his way through the smoke. He felt light on his feet, limitless, while Black’s SS goons were still dazed and confused after the crash.

He was a few meters from Kong’s door when a huge fat man with a lead pipe jumped off the step. It was Chris Black, Jezebeth’s only son. This guy wasn’t SS. He was dressed in a bright blue suit with a white shirt, collar hanging open. Dirty brown hair spilling down his face. Chris Black was a regular media bad boy, connected with all kinds of illegal activity. It had been suggested on more than one occasion that Jezebeth’s baby boy had ties to the mob in New York.

“Son of a bitch!” he said. “I’m going to kill you.”

Chris swung the lead pipe as if he was trying to decapitate Nolan with a single blow. Nolan recognized the pipe as a prop from Goliath.

Chris’s burst of aggression forced Nolan backwards across the gas station. As he retreated into the blackish-gray fog, Nolan heard a flurry of movement at his back. Some of the SS were back on their feet and buzzing around Nolan like flies. Fortunately they were unarmed, their pistols buried underneath all the smoke.

“Get him!” somebody yelled.

Nolan was in trouble. He couldn’t deal with a pack of SS and a lead pipe swinging gangster at the same time.

“Hey! Over here.”

Nolan looked back towards the road. Emerging through the mist he saw Eagle Boy and Typhoon, pumping their arms and legs in unison as they dashed across the street towards the gas station. Eagle Boy’s out of control wings flapped at his back. Typhoon’s ninja mask was back over his face.

“What the hell is that?” an SS voice asked.

“Are they dressed up as the Retaliators?”

“That is The Retaliators. That’s Eagle Boy and Typhoon. Well, well, well – looks like everyone’s dressing up tonight.”

The SS, leaving Chris Black to deal with Nolan, went to meet the Retaliators head on.

“Wait till I tell my son I kicked the shit out of Eagle Boy,” somebody said on their way over.

Nolan turned back to the front. Chris Black was marching through the thinning smoke towards Nolan, tapping the lead pipe off his hand.

“You’re dead.”

Black attacked Nolan in a fit of anger. He gripped the pipe with both hands and swung wildly. There was a deep whooshing noise with each swing. Some of those whooshes got a little too close for Nolan’s liking. Black was overweight but he was powerful and as long as his engine lasted he was a serious threat.

Nolan bounced on his feet like a prime Muhammad Ali. He used smart side-to-side footwork to stay out of range of Black’s strikes, allowing the big man to exhaust himself by swinging and missing over and over again.

“Stay away from my mom!” Chris hollered. “You think I’m scared of that stupid dumb ass outfit you’re wearing huh? HUH? HUH?”

As the two men circled one another, Nolan caught sight of Typhoon and Eagle Boy in the distance. They were both flat on their backs getting their asses kicked.

WHOOSH!

The lead pipe sliced through the air, landing inches from Nolan’s face.

“Shit,” he said.

He encircled Chris Black again, moving left and right. After Chris missed a few more times, Nolan went for broke. He launched off his right foot, leaping in mid-air, aiming a flying left knee at the big man’s double chin. The shot missed the target but landed on Chris’s neck. Chris staggered backwards and Nolan finished him off with a crisp one-two combination to the head.

Chris hit the ground, his lights switched off.

Nolan heard a high-pitched yelp of pain at his back. He spun around and marched through the fog.

There were four SS guys on their feet and they were easily getting the better of the Retaliators. Two of them were pounding on an exhausted Eagle Boy, using him as a horizontal punch bag. Eagle Boy was trying to throw punches from the ground but Nolan could tell those shots had all the sting of a soft breeze. Same with Typhoon. He was taking a beating from another pair of suits.

“Who’s your daddy now Typhoon?” one of them said. “Say it. Who’s your daddy? Who’s your daddy you Retaliator bitch?”

Nolan knelt down beside one of the SS guys lying unconscious. He rummaged through the man’s jacket, searching for the holster. When he found it he pulled out a Heckler and Koch VP9. Nolan checked the pistol’s magazine. It was full.

He straightened up when he heard a screeching banshee-like wail in the distance. It was Cowboy Samurai. He was in the midst of a belated charge from Goliath, running across the street with a katana over his head.

“Leave my friends alone!”

Cowboy Samurai stopped dead when he saw the SS getting to their feet. They walked towards him, all of them. They were done pounding on Eagle Boy and Typhoon, at least for the moment. Now it was Cowboy Samurai’s turn and after that, Nolan thought, there was only a heavily pregnant Viking Chick and Axel left.

“Oh Jesus,” Cowboy Samurai said. He dropped the sword and held his hands up. “Please don’t hurt me.”

“Cowboy Samurai!” one of the SS said, panting with exhaustion. “Why you’re my favorite Retaliator of all. I always wondered how your character was going to die. Now I know.”

Nolan cleared his throat and walked out of the smoke.

“Hey.”

The four SS men turned around. Their faces didn’t have time to register the shock before Nolan fired into the smoke, splitting their skulls open. One-two-three-four. They dropped like puppets whose strings had been cut in mid-performance.

Cowboy Samurai clamped a hand over his mouth. With a muted squeal, he pushed himself up onto his feet and hurried over to his two wounded friends. He dropped to his knees and wailed.

“Oh my God! They’re dead.”

Nolan shook his head as he walked over.

“Save it for the Oscars,” he said. “They’re moving aren’t they? Now do me a favor will you? Get your buddies up onto their feet and take them back to Goliath. And this time stay there will you? I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Cowboy Samurai nodded. Then he began rousing his fallen friends.

Nolan turned around and walked over to Kong, the H&K pistol hanging low at his side. The smoke was thinning. Visibility around the station was returning to normal.

He stepped onto the bus. It was eerily quiet inside.

The driver was unconscious or dead at the wheel. His body was slumped at a painful angle, arms and legs pointing in the wrong direction. His pale lips were frozen in a crooked smile.

Nolan crept quietly down the aisle, wafting the last of the smoke away. He checked the downstairs bathroom first. Empty. With the pistol pointing into the emptiness, Nolan walked further inside Kong, stepping into the lounge area at the back.

A noise.

Something tore through the fading smoke, shrieking hysterically.

Jezebeth Black had a kitchen knife raised above her head. Blood streamed from a cut over her eye and this, intermingled with a layer of sweat-smudged makeup and a demonic facial expression, made her look like one of the better-dressed zombie extras on Goliath.

“BASTARD!”

The attack was clumsy but survival instinct took over and Nolan, whose code didn’t include hitting women, snapped a crisp front kick to the belly. The kick landed flush and Jezebeth Black flew down the aisle like Superwoman in reverse.

She crashed into the back wall and fell to the floor. Jezebeth remained flat on her back, groaning like a wounded bear.

Nolan began walking towards her but he stopped when he heard a light stampeding noise at his back. He spun around, ready to empty the rest of the H&K’s magazine into Chris Black.

There was a blur of movement on the stairs. Arms and legs pumped back and forth. The celebrities were fleeing the sinking ship, running down to the lower deck and leaping through the door as if they were jumping out of a plane thirty thousand feet in the air. Some held their hands up as if surrendering to enemy forces. Others covered their noses and mouths with handkerchiefs or shirtsleeves to avoid the smoke. A few coughed uncontrollably.

In a few seconds they were all gone.

Nolan turned back to Jezebeth Black. He went over and placed the sole of his boot on her belly. She wriggled in protest, spitting and cursing at Nolan like a caged devil.

“Motherfucker!” she hissed. “Get off me. Do you know who I am? I’m Jezebeth Black, the next President of the United States.”

Nolan lowered the bandana, revealing his face. “Remember me?”

Her eyes widened.

“You!”

He crouched down beside her. “Yes. Me.”

Nolan placed the pistol under her chin.

“Where’s Rage?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

Nolan gave the H&K a gentle shove, forcing Black’s head to tilt back. Now she was staring at the ceiling.

“Think. Where’s Rage?”

Black groaned with frustration. “He’s doing what I’m doing for God’s sake. He’s trying to win the election. He’s out campaigning, which means he’s on the move just like I was before you sabotaged my vehicle.”

Nolan stared at her. “You know he was never going to let you win that election don’t you?”

“Go to hell. It was a fair contest.”

“No it wasn’t,” Nolan said.

He spat in his fingers. Then he rubbed the saliva in and reached his hand towards Black’s face. She flinched but there was nowhere for her to go. Nolan began wiping the red lipstick off her mouth, smudging it so much that she resembled a sad, drunken clown.

She whimpered under Nolan’s touch.

“What are you going to do to me?” she asked.

Nolan backed off down the aisle, raising the rag-like bandana over his face. When he reached the driver’s cabin he removed the key from Kong’s ignition. He slipped the keys into his pocket, reminding himself to grab some guns on his way back. Might need them later.

“I said what are you going to do to me?” Black sobbed. “Tell me! Please!”

Nolan stood there, looking at her with pitiless eyes. “Nothing,” he said. “I’m not going to do anything to you.”

He pointed to the window.

“The question you want to ask yourself Jezebeth is this – what are they going to do to you?”

Chapter 10

The hanging lingered in Kasey’s mind.

It lingered even more than the massacre at Melrose, a massacre she’d barely survived and where Lars and Charlie had died. At Melrose however, all the worst details had been lost in the frenzy of the crowd. On Sunset Strip, it had been more intimate. There’d only been one man hanging and as he’d slowly died there was nowhere else to look.

She was sitting in the booth at the back of Jaws. Hands on her face, elbows parked on the table. Everything had gone back to normal on Jaws – if you could call it that. The hedonists were back on the move, disappearing into bedrooms to lose themselves in copious amounts of drugs, alcohol and sex. Kasey didn’t blame them anymore. Pleasure seeking was a perfectly feasible way of blocking out reality. The other members of her family were masters at that.

The stench of Jack Daniels, which Kasey thought smelled like nail-polish remover, wafted across the aisle.

Blaze was sprawled on the couch opposite Kasey’s booth. He was drinking straight from the bottle, guzzling whiskey down like it was cold lemonade on a warm summer’s afternoon. The top two buttons on his shirt were loose and there was a shine on his pinkish-white skin. He held his bloody, bandaged hand in midair as he drank, wincing slightly as he moved it back and forth, assessing the damage from different angles.

Every now and then he’d fix Kasey with a hard stare.

Kasey averted her eyes but she could feel him watching her.

She almost cried out with relief when someone else came walking down the aisle towards the rear of the apartment. When Kasey realized it was Shirley Fontaine, the actress, she sat bolt upright, no longer trying to slide down the back of the seat and disappear.

Holy shit, she thought. Shirley Fontaine.

Shirley walked past Blaze and slid into the booth, sitting opposite Kasey. She wore a blue and white Goliath t-shirt and baggy gray sweatpants. Merchandise, probably stolen from a prop wardrobe. The t-shirt had a picture of all three MBTs – Goliath, Jaws and Kong – storming through the desert being chased by a giant horde of hungry zombies.

She’s changed clothes, Kasey thought. Which meant she’d taken her clothes off at some point – like everyone else on the bus.

“Look at you,” Shirley said, pulling out a pack of Marlboro and a box of matches from the pocket of her sweatpants. She lit up fast like it was a race. Kasey watched the older woman with interest as she inhaled on the cancer stick. Shirley Fontaine was no bland, disposable beauty from the Hollywood machine. Her face had personality. The round blue eyes were tough and alert. Kasey recalled that one movie reviewer had described Fontaine’s face as the face of an urban Athena, streetwise and strong. That about summed it up, Kasey thought.

Best of all, Shirley was one of the few people on board Jaws who didn’t have cocaine eyes – the bloodshot, dilated pupils that Kasey saw every time her mother walked into the living room at home after having gone for a ‘nap’ in the bedroom. Shirley didn’t even look drunk. Even if she had been screwing all night on Jaws, she wasn’t out of it. That at least was something.

Blaze spread his legs like a voyeur, basking in a private peep show. His lips toyed with the rim of the bottle.

“Ain’t you pretty,” Shirley said, the cigarette dangling loose in between her lips. “And scared shitless by the looks of it. Right?”

Kasey took her elbows off the table.

“Aren’t you?”

Shirley laughed and coughed at the same time. “You think I’d be in those bedrooms down there with those creeps if I wasn’t scared? Everything’s got a price baby girl. A seat on this fucked up bus is just like a seat on every other bus in the world. It costs something. ”

Kasey nodded. “Tell me about it.”

Shirley dropped her matches on the table next to the Marlboro pack.

“Campaigning’s not going well so far,” she said. “Is it? One mass shooting and a hanging.”

“Not the sort of thing you see on Fox News,” Kasey said.

Shirley dragged on the Marlboro so hard that her sunken cheeks practically met in the middle of her face. Then she turned her head to the side, blowing a subtle cloud of smoke in Blaze’s direction. Kasey didn’t know if the gesture was intended as a deliberate accident. She hoped so.

“Yeah well,” Shirley said. “I hear Rage wants the celebrity endorsement turned up several notches. Apparently we’re lousy cheerleaders and it’s all our fault.”

“Guy’s a dick,” Kasey said. She said it quietly so Blaze wouldn’t hear her badmouthing his man crush.

Shirley flicked ash into an empty shot glass on the table.

“It’s nothing new,” she said. “Politicians have been using famous people as glitter for years. And by God, Rage needs a lot of sparkle tonight. This fucked up campaign of his is going down like a fat kid on a seesaw. It’s not enough for us just to be up there waving and smiling alongside him anymore. Now he wants us to give speeches. To write and prepare speeches. Can you believe that?”

“He’s the worst President ever,” Kasey said. “Why don’t you tell him to shove it up his ass?”

Shirley’s head jerked towards the window. “Have you seen the alternative? What’s your name darling?”

“Kasey.”

“Have you seen the alternative Kasey?” Shirley said.

Kasey stared longingly outside. “Better than being stuck in here.”

Shirley was already halfway down the cigarette. This was sprint smoking at its finest. The next one was out the pack, lying on the table next to the matches and waiting to go. “Where are your people Kasey?”

“Dead.”

“Dead?”

“Yeah.”

“So you’re alone?”

“I’ve got a friend somewhere,” Kasey said. “But I don’t know where.”

Shirley glanced at Blaze. The Chief-of-Security continued to pour Jack Daniels down his neck, both hands wrapped firmly around the bottle. His raspy breathing was so loud it sounded like it was coming through a PA.

“So he owns you now?” Shirley asked.

Kasey shook her head. She leaned across the table, lowering her voice to a whisper.

“If he puts a hand on me I’ll kill him.”

Shirley stabbed the remainder of the cigarette into the shot glass and immediately lit up Marlboro number two. She offered the pack to Kasey then pulled it away quickly with an embarrassed smile.

“Don’t mind me sitting here do you?” she asked.

“No,” Kasey said.

Quite the opposite, she thought.

There was a pained smile on Shirley’s face as she held the cigarette in between her index and middle fingers. Ordinarily the smell of cigarettes made Kasey want to barf but tonight she barely noticed it.

“Be smart kiddo,” Shirley said. “Want a little advice from an older head who’s been round the block? Do whatever it takes to get through this. You can always run later when it’s a good time but today’s not a good time. Right here, right now…well you’ve been out there. Yeah? It’s been what? A couple of hours since the attack and already the world’s gone feral. Didn’t take much to flip the switch did it?”

“Be smart?” Kasey said. “Is that what you’re doing in the bedroom down there? Is that what they call it nowadays?”

The urban Athena mask slipped for a second to reveal a frightened woman sitting opposite Kasey.

“I want to see my family again,” she said.

Kasey nodded. “Husband? Kids?”

“Sister,” Shirley said. “My younger sister. She was at the Paramount Party too but we lost track of each other and after the attack well, I looked for her. Almost didn’t get on this damn bus. I’m still kinda hoping she’s on the other one, the blue one that Jezebeth Black took.”

“Shirley and Lisa Fontaine,” Kasey said. “The Fontaine sisters. I read an article about you guys not so long ago. She’s the one who plays Viking Chick in the Retaliator movies right?”

“That’s her,” Shirley said, her face lighting up. “She’s heavily pregnant too, which means…”

“BLAZE!”

It was Mickey the driver. “BLAZE! You better get up here right now. We got a problem on our hands. A big fucking problem.”

Blaze stared down the yellow brick road for a second. Then he groaned and took a hearty swig of JD before screwing the cap back on and tossing the bottle onto the couch. As he stood up he slapped himself hard on the face – not just once but several times. Just one of those slaps would have knocked the average man into oblivion.

The Chief-of-Security tied his loose buttons and walked towards the driver’s cabin.

Shirley and Kasey both leaned out of the booth, watching as Blaze spoke with the man behind the wheel.

“What is it?” Blaze said.

“Left hand window,” Mickey the driver said. “Take a look at what’s riding up our ass.”

Blaze went over to the left side and pushed his face up against the glass. His face wrinkled into a tense grimace.

He walked over to the bottom of the stairs. Cupping both hands around his mouth, Blaze yelled up the staircase, loud enough for everyone in the Los Angeles region to hear him.

“SIR! You’d better come down and take a look at this.”

“Be right there,” Rage’s muffled voice replied.

Blaze straightened up his tie as he waited for the President. He also flattened down his collar.

The clatter of shoes thumping off the staircase made Kasey wince. Everyone and everything on this bus was so damn loud.

Rage and a small cohort of Secret Service descended to the lower deck. As they gathered in the aisle Blaze mumbled something in the boss’s ear. With a couple of agents shadowing his every move, Rage went over and peered outside.

“Goddamn it,” he barked, stepping back with his hands on his hips. He stood there for almost a full minute in silence.

“This is all I need,” he said eventually.

Kasey and Shirley exchanged confused glances.

“What the hell’s going on?” Shirley asked.

“Don’t know,” Kasey answered. “But I’m going over to the window to take a look. You coming?”

“You bet.”

Kasey slipped out of the booth and Shirley followed. They crept quietly over to the window, not wanting to be noticed by anyone down front.

Kasey heard it before she saw it – the waspish roar of engines in the distance.

“Oh shit,” Shirley said. She was the first of the two to look out and she strained her head to the left, trying to get the best possible view. Despite the trepidation in her voice, she burst into a fit of laughter, dropping onto the couch next to Blaze’s discarded bottle of Jack Daniels. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”

Kasey nodded as she took in the view. But she sure as hell wasn’t laughing.

A fleet of bikers was catching up on Jaws. They were mostly clad in faded torn denims, smothered in brightly colored patches on their arms and over their hearts. There were about fifty in total, maybe more. They came in fast, riding Harleys and with long dirty hair flapping in the breeze. With the horizon ablaze in the background, Kasey had the feeling she was staring at an army of ghost riders riding straight through the gates of Hell.

“Arm yourselves!” Blaze commanded.

The suits rallied fast, rounding up their people and getting organized for battle. Urgency swept through Jaws like a tidal wave. Somebody yelled to the crowd, reminding the Secret Service agents to make sure that all pistols and semi-automatics were fully loaded.

Rage stayed at the window, staring outside with a thoughtful look on his face.

Mickey the driver leaned his head into the aisle.

“President Rage,” he said in a slightly panicked tone. “If I’ve got this dashboard figured out like I think I have then grenades are all set to go. Port side on your mark. I drop a few turtle shells and this fight will be over before it begins.”

Rage shook his head.

“No.”

Blaze hurried to his boss’s side. “Sir? Would you rather use the side guns?”

Rage wagged a finger in the air – the parent educating the child. He turned around to face his Chief-of-Security and the huddle of Secret Service agents gathered around the driver’s cabin.

Kasey and Shirley were also watching up the back.

“Opportunity presents itself in many forms,” he said. “Often it comes in the form of a threat. Those people out there, they respect confidence and I respect that. More importantly, I can use it.”

Before Blaze could respond, Rage turned to the driver’s cabin.

“Mickey,” he said. “Stop the bus and don’t do anything else until I say so. Understand.”

There was a moment’s pause.

“Sir?” Mickey said.

“I said stop the bus.”

There was a faint shriek from the brakes as Jaws slowed down. Meanwhile the motorized hum of the biker clan got louder.

The troubled expression on Blaze’s face was clear for all to see, even from where Kasey and Shirley were positioned up the back. Kasey for one was enjoying the big bastard’s discomfort.

“Sir, I don’t like this.”

The President gestured to the small army of black suits crammed onto the lower deck. They formed a neat line down the aisle.

“I thank you for your service,” Rage said. “All of you. But this is what’s going to happen – I’m going out there to speak to those men. Alone. Now if anything goes wrong, by all means lay waste to them and do so by any means you see fit. But in the meantime, hold tight. Just trust me on this one. Okay? Mickey, bring her to stop and keep your ears peeled.”

“Yes sir.’

Jaws rolled to a stop in the middle of the road.

Shirley pulled the nearest window open, just a few inches. “I don’t want to miss this,” she whispered, throwing Kasey a wink.

The collective growl of the bikers fizzled to a quiet purr. Now that the MBT had stopped the riders took up their positions with some of the bikers pulling up at the front, acting as a single-line roadblock and preventing Jaws from going any further. Others parked at the side of the MBT, others at the back.

Jaws was surrounded. The bikers had executed the maneuver swiftly and with clinical perfection.

They remained perched on their Harleys, waiting. All the faces outside were blank and patient.

“Open her up Mickey,” Rage said.

Kasey heard the folding doors hiss open.

The President exchanged a final, curt nod with his troopers. Then, without a word, he stepped outside to face the biker army.

Kasey and Shirley turned their attention back to the window.

Rage, completely cut off from his people, was walking towards the small army that had pulled them off the road.

“He’s got balls,” Shirley said. “I’ll give him that much.”

One of the bikers, an older man in his sixties with mean eyes, cropped gray hair and matching stubble, stepped off his bike – a slick black and silver Harley with gleaming ape hanger handlebars. Kasey figured this guy was the leader. He had a seen it all, done it all, don’t-fuck-with-me face. A burning Stars and Stripes patch stood out on both elbows of his denim jacket. What impressed Kasey most of all however, was his neck tattoo – a giant skull wearing a medieval style battle helmet.

“I’ll be damned,” the biker leader said, coming forward to meet Rage halfway. He extended his hand and Rage took it. “The President of the United States. And you’re all alone. Well that is a surprise.”

Shirley and Kasey moved their ears closer to the window. Apart from the two men talking outside it was deathly silent everywhere else, including inside Jaws.

“Pleased to meet you,” Rage said. He spoke in a clear, calm voice.

“I’m Eddie Knox,” the old biker said in deep raspy tone. “And these folks right here are my brothers – The Grim Lords. Say I hope you don’t mind us riding alongside you chief. Didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted say, well, that’s a hell of a good-looking machine you got there. Just the thing for a night like this – for the great reckoning. Huh?”

“It’s a fine machine alright,” Rage said. “Just like your bikes are all fine machines.”

“You like our bikes?” Eddie said, pulling out a pack of smokes from his jacket pocket. His tone was overly cheerful. Overly friendly.

“Very much,” Rage said.

Eddie smiled, showing off a set of yellow protruding teeth. He lit up and took a heavy drag of his cigarette, blowing a trail of smoke in the President’s direction.

“Motherfucker,” Blaze growled from behind the door of Jaws. His pistol was loaded and ready. The Secret Service agents were all crowding the aisle at his back, standing silent. Waiting for the order.

“I tell you what,” Eddie said, glancing over Rage’s shoulder at Jaws for a second. “Seeing as how you’re the President and all, how about I give you one of these bikes? You know, as a gift from the Grim Lords to you Mr. Rage. A token of our support. Any bike you choose, any one at all. I mean that. You can even have mine if you want it. Hell she’s sick of carrying my fat old ass anyway.”

“That’s very generous of you,” Rage said. “But I’m sure you gentlemen will be needing every…”

“Not at all,” Eddie said, taking a step forward. “I insist. I want you to pick a bike.”

He pointed at Jaws and grinned.

“And in the spirit of fair trade oh great chief, the Grim Lords are going to take possession of that big red beauty over there. Oh yes sir. Aren’t we boys?”

The Grim Lords reached into their hard cases and pulled out a small arsenal of pistols, shotguns and semi-automatics. They pointed everything at Rage.

Blaze’s nostrils flared wide. He looked like a human bomb waiting to go off. His hand was up, waiting to signal the troops at Rage’s command. Kasey wondered if Blaze’s twisted heart could take much more.

“Fair trade,” Eddie said. “One Harley for the red beast. If you think you’re getting a raw deal I’m sure we can find you a woman or something. There’s plenty running around tonight. Easy pickings. What do you like? Blonde? Brunette? Or is it true what they say about you sir? Do you prefer your women with a dick? Because that can be arranged too.”

Kasey winced. Outside, the silence was unbearable.

“I must say no,” Rage said. His voice was surprisingly calm. “Thank you but no. It’s impossible.”

A black curtain descended over the biker leader’s eyes. “Nothing’s impossible,” he snarled.

“It is,” Rage said. “You getting your hands on this vehicle. That’s impossible.”

The President lifted a hand in the air.

“Mickey.”

Kasey heard a sharp click that coincided with a faint rumbling sensation in the bowels of Jaws. Like the beast was waking up underneath her. Then she heard the chilling whirr of the gun barrels, which were on the Grim Lords in a flash. The left gun pointed at Eddie and his men while the right barrel propelled itself forward several feet, taking aim at the platoon of Lords acting as a roadblock out front.

Mickey laughed behind the wheel. “Dumb fuckers.”

There was a sudden clatter above Kasey’s head. She heard a barrage of footsteps thundering over the roof. It was only then that she realized Blaze and the SS were no longer standing in the lower deck aisle. Kasey had been so fixated on the Rage and Eddie standoff outside to notice that Rage’s soldiers had crept to the roof in silence. Kasey pictured the scene up there, Blaze and his soldiers perched at the edge of the roof, their collective firepower trained on the Grim Lords.

“Oh this is going to get ugly,” Shirley whispered.

Kasey pressed a finger to her lips. “Shhh.”

Rage walked past Eddie, towards the rest of the bikers.

“Everyone dies Eddie,” Rage said. “That’s probably what you’re thinking now isn’t it? Time for the big shootout between yours and mine. Go out fighting. Go out on your shield with the boys in a blaze of glory. And yet you know now, perhaps for the first time in your life as a street soldier, that you’re beaten. Still, you’re thinking about fighting anyway. Aren’t you? It’s okay, you can say it. I admire that kind of fight in a man.”

Rage turned around, extending his hands towards Jaws.

“But the thing is Eddie,” he said, “everyone doesn’t die. Just yours. You don’t understand the firepower that’s pointing at you right now. If you did, if you’d seen this beast called Jaws at work, then you’d tell your boys to lower their weapons. Because if they don’t, I swear to God they’ll be dead within twenty seconds. All of them, including you.”

Eddie’s long, dirty fingernails scratched at the stubble on his face. He tossed a worried glance back at his comrades.

“Be smart Eddie,” Rage said. “Play the game.”

Slowly, the biker leader raised a hand in the air, signaling his men to lower their weapons. They did it quickly.

Eddie laughed and Kasey heard the shaking in his voice. “You’re everything they said you were Mr. President sir,” he said. “And a whole lot more besides. It took balls to come out here like you did. Alone.”

Rage nodded, a half-smile creeping onto his face.

“Thank you Eddie,” he said. “That means a lot coming from you.”

Rage walked over to the Grim Lords, hands clasped behind his back. Kasey was reminded of a painting she’d once seen of Napoleon inspecting his troops before battle.

“I see something beautiful here before me,” Rage said, looking each and every biker in the eye as he walked down the line. “Despite the ugliness of a single night I see something beautiful. Something alive and strong. What do I see?”

The President smiled.

“Soldiers. I see the makings of a great army for the new America that will rise from the ashes of tonight. With victory in the election tonight Eddie, I’ll be the official leader of the new America. And with Washington in ruins and Congress, I can pick and choose my people at will. I can rebuild to my liking.”

“Yeah we heard about the election,” Eddie asked. “What the hell you doing that for? You’re already the President and you’ve got muscle and that big mother of a death truck. Why waste time with an election?”

“Because I love democracy,” Rage said. “When the dust clears they’ll examine what happened here tonight and see that I did everything right. They won’t be able to take it off me. Think long term Eddie, always think long term.”

Eddie nodded and looked back at his men. “And you want soldiers huh? Well just how much are you willing to pay Mr. President? Ain’t no soldiers I know of working for free.”

“Mine do,” Rage said. “Call it a personal favor until we get things up and running again. Then you’ll be richly rewarded.”

“You’re looking for slaves,” Eddie said, his face disappointed. “The Grim Lords don’t…”

“MICKEY,” Rage yelled.

Jaws let rip with a sudden volley of gunfire on both sides.

Kasey and Shirley leapt back from the window, hands covering their ears. But the bullets outside weren’t hitting anyone. They whistled over the heads of the Grim Lords harmlessly. The bikers, including Eddie Knox, didn’t realize this at first. As Jaws fired they ducked for cover and some fell off their bikes, collapsing onto the road in a clumsy, chaotic mess. Some tried to run.

The shooting was over in seconds.

Both barrels remained locked on the Grim Lords. A wispy trail of smoke leaked from the ends.

Rage was the one laughing now.

“This is a fight you can’t win,” he said, once the disheveled Grim Lords had started to pull themselves back together. They slowly climbed back onto their bikes, still reeling at the exhibition of firepower just witnessed.

Eddie gawped at the left gun barrel in horror.

The barrel was pointing straight at him.

“Have you reconsidered my offer Eddie?” Rage said. “And remember what I said, you’ll be richly rewarded in the future for your loyalty. The same goes for all your men. You don’t work for free, of course you don’t. And you’re certainly not slaves either – you’re my soldiers. You’re the beginnings of my army.”

Eddie’s eyes never left the big gun on the left. He swallowed.

“Looks like you just got yourself an army Mr. Rage.”

Knox went over to the President and offered his hand. Rage waited for a moment, then he shook it.

“We’re holding an election tonight,” Rage said. “That still goes. But I must be honest with you my friends – our campaign hasn’t gone well so far and quite frankly, it’s taking too much time. Grim Lords, our new colleagues, I give you your first job as members of the Presidential military force. I want you to be my shepherds tonight. Ride around town, persuading all the survivors you find to come to Hollywood Boulevard. Round them up, bring them to me. Encourage them to vote and what I mean by that is encourage them to vote correctly. Is that understood?”

“Understood,” Eddie said.

Rage signaled towards the red MBT.

“Start her up Mickey,” he said. “Let’s go to Hollywood Boulevard.”

Chapter 11

“Jesus Nolan,” Typhoon said, wiping his bloody nose dry with a handkerchief. “You just left her there? She’s an old woman for Christ’s sake.”

“I left her alive,” Nolan said, his eyes glued to the road.

He shifted in the driver’s seat, trying to get comfortable. He’d taken a few extra aches and pains with him out of the battle with Jezebeth’s men, but it was nothing serious. Cuts and bruises, it would all heal in time. Same with Typhoon and Eagle Boy. Despite the fuss made by Cowboy Samurai after they’d returned to Goliath, it was obvious that the two wounded Retaliators would live to fight another day.

“Would you rather I’d killed her?” Nolan asked.

“Now I didn’t say that,” Typhoon said, standing beside the cabin door. “But, yeah maybe it would have been better than just…oh shit, I don’t know man. I’m not exactly used to all this you know? Plus I just got my ass kicked.”

“Who is used to all this?” Viking Chick said. She and Axel stood closest to the cabin, like parrots perched on Nolan’s shoulder.

“I heard you were a hard case Nolan,” Eagle Boy said, dabbing at a small cut under his hairline. He’d pushed the beak cap back to expose the wound. “No offence man but people in the industry, they talk about you.”

“What do they say about him?” Axel asked.

“They say he’s a miserable bastard to work with,” Eagle Boy said. “And that if the fans didn’t love him so much he’d be out on his ass. This guy’s burned too many bridges already. What’s that about Nolan? Your show, as big as it is now, it ain’t gonna last forever man. Nobody’s going to catch a guy like you on the way down and then where will you be?”

“Thanks for the advice,” Nolan said.

Viking Chick leaned over and punched Eagle Boy on the shoulder. With all his other wounds, it was the last thing Eagle Boy needed.

“Owww,” he said, looking devastated. “What was that for?”

“That man just saved your ass back there.”

“We saved his too,” Eagle Boy said. “Well sort of.”

Viking Chick made a tut-tutting noise, like a disappointed teacher to a naughty child. “You have no idea what Nolan’s been through,” she said in a quiet voice. “Maybe if you did you’d get off his case.”

Nolan’s ears pricked up.

“Huh?” Eagle Boy asked. “What are you talking about?”

Silence in the aisle.

Nolan felt a hot flush coming on. Behind him he sensed human eyes crawling all over his back. It felt like a pack of spiders trying to penetrate his flesh, to dig underneath the surface and go exploring. To violate him. One glance over his shoulder confirmed it. They were all staring at him but it was Viking Chick’s gentle gaze that hit hardest.

“You know?” Nolan asked her in a quiet voice. “About that?”

“It’s like I said,” she said with a sad smile. “I’m a big fan Nolan.”

Nolan turned his back on the five passengers and tried to concentrate on the road. On finding Jaws. That was the only thing that mattered.

“I don’t talk about that.”

His hands were trembling.

Please God, he thought, let it be over. Let them go back to the apartment, sit down and shut up. Weren’t they supposed to be happy just being off the streets? Why did they have to keep talking to him like they were lifelong buddies, prying, prying, prying?

With any luck Viking Chick’s baby would show up soon, riding to the rescue. It was one way of changing the subject.

“Fuck off,” he snapped. “Just fuck off will you?”

It was a moment before anyone said anything.

“Are you alright Nolan?” Viking Chick asked.

“No,” he said. “I’d feel a hell of a lot better if you people would just…what the hell are you all hanging around here for anyway? Didn’t you see enough at the gas station back there? Enough blood? Enough death?”

Nolan’s sweaty hands slipped on the steering wheel. “Fuck!”

“Careful Nolan,” Axel said. “Hold it together man.”

“Please,” Viking Chick said. “I know it was a long time ago Nolan but…”

Nolan couldn’t see a damn thing. The samurai helmet was no longer holding back the sweat. Now it poured into his eyes, causing Nolan to blink as if a life-threatening seizure was imminent. He pulled the bandana down and gasped for air. His heart was thumping and his throat had never felt drier. Something bad was happening. Was this a stroke or the beginnings of a heart attack?

Not now, he thought. Don’t you die Nolan. Not until you’ve found Rage and after that you can do whatever the hell you want.

He felt like he was drowning in a fire inside the Kowalski costume.

“FUCK!”

Nolan yanked the steering wheel to the right, stabbing the brake over and over again with his boot. Goliath screeched, jerking back and forth on the road at sixty miles per hour, lurching towards the sidewalk and a row of low-roofed buildings.

“Nolan!” Axel yelled. He and Eagle Boy both grabbed a hold of Viking Chick to prevent her falling over. “Stop for God’s sake.”

Nolan heard the boy’s voice. Barely.

“She’s pregnant Nolan,” Eagle Boy shouted. “For Christ’s sake man, stop the bus!”

Nolan couldn’t get the sight of that big swollen belly out of his mind’s eye. Just lying there on the road…

“Please,” Viking Chick said.

Nolan brought Goliath to a violent halt at the side of the road.

He fell back in his seat. As quickly as he could, Nolan pulled the helmet off his head, threw it onto his lap and touched his face. It was scalding damp like he’d been swimming in hot lava.

His breathing was off the charts. Short, shallow and painful gasps.

He sat in the cabin, staring out towards the distant flames, watching smoke spirals drifting skyward.

“What’s wrong with him?” Cowboy Samurai whispered.

“He’s flipped,” Typhoon said. “I mean I think he’s actually lost it. Didn’t you see him at the gas station back there? This guy doesn’t care if he lives or dies. I’m not blaming him – he wouldn’t be the first person to lose his mind tonight. Only question is, what do we do about it?”

Someone tiptoed cautiously towards Nolan. When he turned around, Viking Chick was edging her way closer. She had a finger pressed to her lips, urging the others to stop talking.

Nolan wiped the sweat off his face.

He pointed at Viking Chick’s bump, exposed in between the edges of the cloak.

“Hell of a time to bring someone into the world.”

Viking Chick put her hands over the bump. She rubbed softly, as if comforting the life inside.

“Tell me what happened Nolan,” she said. “But only if you want to.”

Nolan’s voice was drained of all emotion. Even the anger had dried up for now.

“That story’s largely been forgotten,” he said.

“Not by everyone,” Viking Chick said.

“Apparently not.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Eagle Boy said, his brows furrowed in confusion. “Can someone tell me what’s going on? I feel like someone just turned over two pages at once.”

“They’re talking about the crash,” Axel said quietly, as if talking in the middle of a church service. “The car crash.”

“Crash?” Typhoon said. “What crash?”

“It was a long time ago,” Viking Chick said. “I guess you’d have been nineteen or twenty when it happened, right Nolan? An up and coming MMA fighter from New York, a solid prospect with the world at his feet. Then…”

A pause.

“You were driving the car. Your girlfriend was in the passenger seat and…”

“Jesus,” Nolan whispered. It felt like he was having an out of body experience, watching this conversation – if that’s what you could call it – unfold from the ceiling.

“…she was pregnant,” Viking Chick continued. “You guys were on vacation in the country and if I remember the story, that asshole cut right in front of you at a T-junction. Although that’s not what the official version says.”

“Somebody get me a drink,” Nolan said.

“What’ll it be?” Eagle Boy asked. “Whiskey? Beer?”

“Water,” Nolan said.

“I’ll get it,” Axel said. He hurried down the aisle and opened up the small fridge in the apartment. When he came back he thrust an ice-cold Evian into Nolan’s hand.

“Drink it.”

Nolan unscrewed the lid and drained the bottle in a single gulp.

“Want another one?” Axel asked.

Nolan shook his head. “No.” He tossed the bottle onto the floor next to the Kowalski helmet. Then he closed his eyes and sighed.

“Malcolm Campbell,” he said, snarling all four syllables of the name.

“Huh?” Axel asked.

“That’s the man who was driving the other car.”

“Before your time Axel,” Viking Chick said. “Before my time too but I do know that he was a senator. And by all accounts he was also a giant, gaping asshole of a human being.”

“That’s him,” Nolan said.

It was Typhoon who spoke next. “Oh shit,” he said, staring at Nolan with wide eyes. “Are we talking about the same Campbell crash that I think we’re talking about? Twenty, twenty five years ago right? I saw pictures of the wreck. No way. That was you?”

Nolan nodded.

“There’s a lot of stuff on the Internet about it these days,” Viking Chick said. “Chat forums and that kind of thing.”

She put a hand on Nolan’s shoulder and Nolan didn’t push it away. It felt okay and he was too tired to fight.

“What really happened Nolan?” she said.

Nolan picked the Evian bottle up off the floor and started peeling the label off, hacking away at it with his thumbnail.

“Campbell was driving a soft-top Bentley,” he said. “Vicki and me, we were in my old Ford Focus – it was the first car I ever owned. Campbell came flying out of that T-junction like a maniac under a full moon. Drunk as a skunk, coked out of his mind – that’s my take. It’s no secret nowadays he was an alcoholic cokehead but back then? Forget it – he was a white knight as far as Joe Public was concerned. Mr. Charity.”

He took a deep breath.

“Vicki was pregnant,” Nolan said. “She was nearly eight months pregnant and that’s why I was driving like an old woman going to church on Sunday morning. But…there was no way of avoiding it. Campbell came out so late, so fast. Vicki’s seatbelt was off just before it happened. She asked me if I wanted a drink. It was the last thing she ever said to me. You thirsty babe? I said yes. She was reaching for the cooler when…”

Nolan crushed the bottle and threw it to the floor along with label torn in a hundred pieces.

“I can’t talk about this.”

“Try,” Viking Chick said. “Trust me. Try.”

He took a deep breath.

“We were both scared about having a baby,” Nolan said, sitting up straight. Somehow it didn’t feel right remembering Vicki from a slouch. “We were so young and there was always this fear that we’d never have time for ourselves after the kid was born. But we were excited too. We were. Our kid was going to be the best kid ever. But that trip to Maine, that was for us. One week, that’s all. Me and Vicki. It was our last hurrah as a twosome. Well that turned out to be true, just not in the way I thought.”

“What about this Campbell?” Axel asked. “What did he do? Did he go to jail?”

Nolan closed his eyes, going back to that day in his mind.

“Campbell’s Bentley didn’t come off too bad. He walked out with barely a scratch and I remember seeing him with this old-fashioned cellphone pressed against his ear, talking at a hundred miles per hour. He didn’t even look at us, not right away. He went over and sat down beside a white picket fence that ran alongside the road. Kept talking into his phone. I thought he was calling an ambulance because I didn’t have a phone at that time. Well it turned out he was calling for backup. It was only later that I found out he’d been vacationing in a nearby cottage with a woman who wasn’t his wife. He had a little club with him too, movers and operators who tended to his every request. Hangers on, that kind of thing. Asshole thought he was a rock star, not a politician.”

Nolan opened his eyes.

“Vicki’s head hit the windshield,” he said. “She died instantly. I brought her out onto the road, did CPR, but she was gone. I sat on the road, numb – more than anything I was numb. Campbell was sitting beside the fence talking to his team and I swear to God, I’ll never forgive myself for not killing him that day. Never. It’s the biggest regret of my life. But my mind was gone – I was a wreck and Campbell’s reinforcements arrived on the scene long before I started thinking straight.”

“What did they do?” Viking Chick asked. “His people.”

Nolan shifted in the driver’s seat, his back facing the others.

“They talked to me. In fact they wouldn’t stop talking to me. They explained that the man in the Bentley was a ‘very important gentleman.’ I’ll always remember that part. He was a very important gentleman.”

Viking Chick rubbed Nolan’s shoulder. “Assholes.”

Nolan stared outside with haunted eyes. “Vicky was lying on the road and that bump – it was even bigger than yours…I can still see it now.”

His skin felt cold. All the sweat had dried and now its icy cold afterlife clung to him.

“Anyway,” Nolan said, clearing his throat. “His goons told me the police were on their way and that when they got there I was to tell the truth. I asked them what the ‘truth’ was. They said I’d tell the police that I was driving too fast and that the accident was my fault.”

Axel’s jaw dropped. “They tried to intimidate Butch fucking Nolan? What a nerve man!”

“I was just a kid Axel,” Nolan said, glancing at the boy. “And there were other matters to consider. Things nobody would have believed at the time. One of the first things Campbell did after the crash was take note of my license plate number. Motherfucker kept a cool head throughout the whole thing. He passed it onto his goons over the phone and they ran it through their files. When they reached the crash site they knew who I was, where I lived, they knew everything about me. They knew who my mother, father and sister were – they actually read out their names and addresses to me. Even back then they could pull every last detail of my life out of a hat. They also knew about my criminal record. I used to steal cars with my friends when I was fifteen, sixteen. They knew all about that.”

“What happened?” Cowboy Samurai asked.

“I told them it was Campbell’s fault,” Nolan said. “The funny thing is when I said it I honestly thought that it would make a difference. That the truth mattered. I was a real dreamer I guess. Well those bastards, they just leaned in closer, about eight of them as I recall. One guy, bald head, big walrus mustache and black sunglasses – he was the spokesman. He whispered in my ear in this creepy voice. He told me that my family wouldn’t see another Christmas if I said anything about Campbell to the police.”

“And?” Eagle Boy said.

“My parents both lived long and happy lives,” Nolan said, sitting forward in the driver’s seat. “My sister’s still alive somewhere, last I heard. She’s got two kids.”

“That’s some fucked up shit man,” Axel said, sounding genuinely outraged. “How in the hell did they get away with that?”

Nolan smiled at the boy. “You’d be surprised at what rich and powerful people can get away with Axel,” he said. “I sure as hell was. They also said they’d bury the story after a few weeks. That eventually no one would care and that I could even avoid prison and get on with my life. All if I took the rap. Said nothing to no one. So that’s it – I became the villain and everyone else thought I was responsible for killing my girlfriend and my unborn daughter.”

“Jesus,” Viking Chick said, both hands on the bump. “I’m so sorry Nolan.”

“The newspapers crucified me,” Nolan recalled. “At least for a while. And Vicki’s family disowned me. I disappeared, shacked up in a friend’s apartment in New York. The goons were right about one thing though – the stories did disappear. After a couple of weeks there wasn’t a word written about that car crash. Not a single word. That wasn’t a surprise I guess. Campbell didn’t want anyone asking too many questions. As for me, I don’t remember how I got through those first few weeks after getting home. The worst thing was being banned from Vicki’s funeral – that hurt. And there was a service for my daughter too that I couldn’t get near. They called her Emily. They’re buried beside each other in New York.”

It was Axel who broke the stunned silence. “How the hell does a person cope after that?”

Nolan shook his head. “I don’t know, I just dropped out. Didn’t train, didn’t do anything except sleep. I moved from New York to LA not long afterwards. Threw everything into fighting. I trained all day and all night like I was possessed – fighting was the only thing that mattered because it controlled the anger. When I wasn’t fighting I was mad. So I fought a lot. When I eventually became champ the crash story resurfaced again but by then the Internet was in full swing and there were alternate theories about what happened that day. A lot of people guessed rightly that Campbell was off his head on drugs and that he was the one to blame. He was dead by then and his womanizing and cocaine habit had leaked out.”

“He died?” Axel said. “You never saw him again?”

“He never spoke publicly about the crash,” Nolan said. “Not one word. In the end, he died in bed surrounded by his family. Beloved by all. In the meantime I became the best fighter in the world. As well as unarmed combat I trained extensively with firearms and in swordsmanship – it was my therapy I guess. I turned myself into the perfect killer and it was never enough. Everyone I ever hit in the cage I saw Campbell. Even on Goliath, every zombie I ever killed, it’s him. But in reality, the man got away with it.”

“You never got married?” Viking Chick asked.

“I lived alone after Vicki,” he said. “That’s why I kept winning fights. No distractions.”

“A life with no love,” Viking Chick said. “That’s sad.”

Nolan smiled. “Well not exactly,” he said. “About eleven years ago, long before Hollywood came knocking at my door, I lived next door to this woman called Jane Corbett in LA. She was a good woman. Well Jane’s Rottweiler had just had a litter of six puppies and the ones she hadn’t sold yet were in the yard one day, fenced off within this little wire enclosure. One of the pups, he was about three and a half months old at the time, managed to escape and being the inquisitive little guy he was, he found his way through a gap in the fence. That brought him into my backyard. He found me sitting on the step and the rest is history…”

Nolan glanced at Axel and the Retaliators.

“That enough?” he said.

Viking Chick nodded.

Nolan scooped up the samurai helmet off the floor. He put it on his head and then refastened the bandana over his nose and mouth. It was still damp with sweat.

When he was ready, Nolan fired up the turbine engine and pulled Goliath back towards the center of the road.

Chapter 12

Kasey and Shirley Fontaine were glued to the window as Jaws made its way along Hollywood Boulevard.

Outside a growing crowd of people accompanied the slow-moving MBT on its westward crawl. These ‘supporters’ were followed on the road by a procession of smaller vehicles – cars and vans mostly, which trailed behind Jaws like a disjointed tail stretching back almost half a mile. Some of the bystanders on foot waved towards the roof of Jaws as they walked, others whooped and cheered. But most kept their heads down, plodding along like death row prisoners closing in on a date with Old Sparky the electric chair.

Hollywood Boulevard had come out of the attack relatively unscathed. The damage Kasey saw out there – broken windows, ransacked stores and burned out cars for the most part – had little to do with fighter jets and everything to do with the local neighborhood scumbags having fun.

Shirley tapped Kasey on the arm. She pointed outside at the old Fonda Theater – an ugly, rectangular building with a list of upcoming attractions listed out front. Rock bands mostly.

“I sang in there once,” she said. “With Lisa. We had a band called…wait for it…”

“The Fontaines?” Kasey said.

“Good guess.”

“Yeah.”

The Grim Lords had proven themselves to be exceptional shepherds. They’d rounded up more people than Kasey would have believed possible in the ghost town that Hollywood had almost become. The bikers had flushed all these poor bastards out of every hiding place and dragged them to the Walk of Fame to vote in the world’s dumbest and worst timed election.

Now they surrounded Jaws like the MBT was giant, four-wheeled god. And Kasey was still squirming at the fact she was inside looking out on these poor souls. God, they must hate her.

A group of young women of about college age ran along the left side of Jaws. They bounced on their toes like wild-eyed cheerleaders, hands high above their heads.

“VOTE RAGE!”

“RAGE FOR PRESIDENT!”

Shirley nodded at the long convoy of cars and vans that followed the marchers like a funeral procession.

“Poor bastards,” she said. “They thought they were the lucky ones. They had cars with wheels still attached and that was their ticket out. I guess they bumped into the Grim Lords at the last minute. Now they’re voters and I bet you they don’t get to leave with their cars either.”

Kasey felt her heart sink.

“He’s going to win isn’t he?”

“He’s already won,” Shirley said. “Unless Jezebeth Black turns up with Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad and The Beatles, she doesn’t stand a chance of winning. The Grim Lords have brought a lot of sheep out tonight and all the sheep are voting Rage. It’s either that or get slaughtered. Jezebeth Black doesn’t have the numbers to win.”

“She’s probably dead already,” Kasey said.

“Maybe.”

“FONTAINE!” a man’s voice yelled from upstairs. It was one of the Secret Service agents and it sounded to Kasey like overenthusiastic Pete from earlier, who had become the chief rouser, patrolling the lower and upper decks for lazy celebrities who weren’t pulling their weight. “Get your skinny ass up here on the roof with all the rest of the stars! Everyone’s up here working and you’re down there doing jack shit. Get moving!”

Shirley winced.

“Coming!”

“And bring the girl with you,” Pete added. “It’s a nice touch. Makes it look more family friendly up there.”

Shirley and Kasey exchanged bewildered glances. But there was nothing else to do except get up there and show face with Team Rage. They climbed the stairs together and landed on the upper deck apartment. In the center of the aisle, a wooden ladder stretched up to the sunroof.

“After you,” Shirley said.

Kasey sighed and put her foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. Through the gap in the ceiling she saw a cloudy, starless sky waiting for her. She could hear them up there, clapping and singing and acting like everything was all right in the world. Of course they were acting – that’s what actors did and Rage must have known they had the chops to pull it off.

“Hallelujah!” somebody roared up there. “Who y’all voting for tonight?”

“RAGE.”

“I can’t hear you.”

“RAGE!”

“Yeeehaaa!”

Kasey climbed the ladder, making her way slowly onto the roof.

A fierce gust of wind welcomed her outside. Hot, clammy wind. Kasey straightened up and wiped a thin layer of dust off her hands. Rancid flavors in the air slipped down her throat, almost making her gag.

Hollywood Boulevard smelled like a chemical factory on fire.

Shirley came up next. Both woman stood frozen for a second, adjusting to the surroundings as Jaws – the RageMobile as some were already renaming it – crawled along Hollywood Boulevard at twenty miles per hour.

The roof of Jaws was like a TMZ journalist’s wet dream. There were movie stars everywhere, A-listers, B-listers, as well as singers, models and other familiar faces from the entertainment industry. Kasey thought she recognized a famous game show host standing beside Rage – one of those older guys with a sharp suit and perma-grin. Who Wants to Be a Trillionaire or some garbage like that.

They were all putting on their happy faces.

Shirley Fontaine walked over to the edge of the roof. She waved at the reluctant voters on the street.

“VOTE RAGE!”

Kasey went over there, giving the older woman a puzzled look. “What the hell are you doing Shirley?”

“Wave darling,” Shirley said, nudging Kasey on the arm with her elbow. “Just smile and do what they expect you to do.”

“No,” Kasey said. “I shouldn’t even be here. I was kidnapped.”

Shirley nudged her again, a little harder this time. “That sack of shit pedophile is watching you,” she said. “And if you don’t make his boss look good he’ll hurt you darling. I know the type. They want a happy kid out here tonight, be a happy kid. Do what it takes to stay alive, remember? Live now, run later. You might even get a shot to run tonight before he calls you to him. In the meantime, survive moment by moment. Would you rather be down there on the street with them?”

“Yes!”

“No you wouldn’t. You’re just a kid Kasey, you don’t know as much as you think you do.”

“Oh man,” Kasey said, watching the Grim Lords roughing up the voters on the street. They were laying into the poor bastards, encouraging those standing nearby to be the most enthusiastic cheerleaders they could be. Others in the crowd, their faces as white as sheets, tried to ignore the violence. They kept moving towards the Walk of Fame, shuffling along with their heads down.

“I can’t be here,” Kasey said.

Shirley looked at the girl. “You ain’t waving sweetheart.”

Kasey put a hand over her mouth and backed off from the edge. “I think I’m gonna puke.”

Shirley matched her retreat, putting a hand on Kasey’s shoulder to steady the girl. Kasey locked her arm around Shirley’s waist, like it was the only thing between her and her worst nightmare.

They both grinned and waved to the crowd.

“Vote Rage,” Kasey said.

Rage and Blaze walked from one end of the roof to the other, basking in the glow of certain victory. With tight-lipped smiles, they acknowledged those on the ground with the occasional wave of the hand.

Not long afterwards Jaws came to a stop. So did the fleet of motorcycles and all the other vehicles. They’d reached the voting point in the heart of the Walk of Fame.

The Grim Lords zipped back and forth along the road, stirring up the massive swarm of bodies that surrounded the MBT. The crowd responded with a series of slow-building chants that gradually picked up steam.

“AMERICA! AMERICA! AMERICA!”

“VOTE RAGE!”

Rage stepped forward, megaphone in hand. The celebrities on the roof parted reverentially, like Moses was present up there with them. This was their time to earn that spot on Jaws and to make sure it stayed theirs for the foreseeable future.

“My fellow Americans,” Rage said. “Let us be honest, first and foremost. They hurt us tonight. The bastards hurt us good. They took something precious from all of us but I can assure you ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of any losses you’ve experienced, that our enemies will be eating radioactive dust for decades to come. And if they ever get back on their feet, which is a big if, they’ll come begging America for forgiveness.”

“THREE CHEERS FOR PRESIDENT RAGE!” Eddie Knox hollered. He was perched on his classic Harley with his hands resting on the ape hanger handlebar, watching from afar as his overzealous brothers worked the crowd up to an acceptable level of Ragemania.

“HIP HIP!”

“Hooray.”

“HIP HIP!”

“Hooray.”

“HIP HIP!”

“Hooray.”

Rage tapped his heart in appreciation.

“We called an election tonight,” he said, signaling for silence. “I know the timing is confusing but it’s important that we did what we did regardless of whatever insults and accusations have come our way this evening. If we don’t elect a leader for tomorrow’s America we risk all out anarchy and self-annihilation. If you elect me as President, I pledge to travel the length and breadth of our great nation, personally overseeing the recovery of our wounded communities. And I’ll be accompanied on my travels by an emergency police force that will wipe out any anarchy in its infancy. I promise you – no fear. You will walk the streets of New America and feel safe.”

“YEAAAHH!” the Grim Lords howled.

The crowd joined in.

“My fellow Americans,” he said as the noise faded. “I’m very confused. It appears that there’s no sign of my opponent in this election, Miss Jezebeth Black.”

“BOO!” some of the bikers yelled.

“Now there’s two possibilities here,” Rage said. “Either Jezebeth has given up on you all or she’s still trying to find someone who’ll vote for her.”

Weak laughter trickled out of the crowd.

“Maybe she got lost!” Eddie Knox shouted from across the street. “Ha-ha-haaaa!”

Kasey’s urge to throw up hadn’t gone away. But she was distracted when she heard a strange noise in the distance.

She shifted left, tuning Rage’s speech out and staring down the long and dark road. There it was – a pair of bright white headlights in the distance. Like a dragon’s eyes, working their way closer.

“Here she comes now!” a voice in the crowd called out. “Jezebeth Black’s coming! She made it after all.”

A horn blared in the distance. If it was indeed a dragon showing up on Hollywood Boulevard it was an angry one, roaring over and over again. Screaming broke out from the edge of the massive crowd. There were people back there running, scattering in all directions and defying the threat of the Grim Lords.

“What’s going on?” Shirley asked.

Kasey didn’t answer. Instead she pushed her way through the crowd, hurrying over to the back end of Jaws. Shirley ran alongside her. When they reached the edge they stood there, both of them gazing out wide-eyed towards the disturbance further back on Hollywood Boulevard.

“What is that?” Shirley said.

It was chaos. The people on the street ran for their lives as if this incoming monster was prodding them with an electric rod. To hell with the Grim Lords. Something much bigger and scarier had just turned up.

“Get out of my way!”

It was a flustered-sounding Rage. He pushed his way through the knot of celebrity cheerleaders, working his way towards the edge of the roof. There was a look of righteous indignation on his face.

Blaze followed, his pistol drawn and ready.

“Jezebeth?” Rage said, narrowing his eyes upon seeing the bright headlights up ahead. “Well I never. She made it. Perhaps I underestimated her determination to sit in the White House.”

“No sir,” Blaze said, looking as if he’d been slapped in the face. “That’s not Jezebeth Black coming our way.”

“What are you talking about Blaze?”

Blaze turned slowly to his boss, his eyes dark and troubled.

“When we left Paramount,” Blaze said. “Jezebeth Black was in Kong. Remember sir? Kong was blue. That is one of the MBTs but it’s not Kong. That’s the silver one. That’s Goliath.”

Rage gasped. The words, when they came, tripped out of his mouth with uncertainty. “Goliath?” he said. “But…”

“Yes sir?”

“If that’s Goliath,” Rage said, “who the hell’s driving it?”

Chapter 13

Goliath plowed through the terrified crowd.

Nolan’s sledgehammer fist pummeled the horn and the MBT belched out its crude warning. People, cars and motorcycles – they were all in his way. They had seconds to get the hell off the road or get turned into sludge.

“Move!” Nolan yelled. His voice was a muffled roar behind the bandana. In between honking the horn he shook a fist at the slow movers acting like deer in the headlights. They’d smiled when they first saw him, just like with Jezebeth’s followers. Then they realized that Goliath meant business and their joyful expressions had shriveled to ones of terror.

Nolan followed the proceedings outside with interest. Those who fled ran towards the side streets in a bid to escape and were immediately pursued by small platoons of Hell’s Angels wannabes on Harleys, trying to steer the runners back towards Hollywood Boulevard.

All of these things, no matter how interesting, were blurry extras at the far edges of Nolan’s vision. Secondary snippets of information. His sole focus was on getting through to Jaws. Rage was over there somewhere. He was one of those human-shaped specks on the roof gazing over at Goliath from afar.

“I’m just in time for the election,” Nolan said. “I wonder who I’ll vote for.”

Despite the bikers’ best efforts the crowd scattered. Those who didn’t run up side streets jumped through the jagged frame of broken windows, taking shelter in vandalized stores. They ran into office buildings and anything else that hinted of a way out. Some dove into the backseats of abandoned cars and kept their heads down. Everyone seemed to sense something big was coming, and it wasn’t just Goliath.

There were cars on the street jerking left and right, the drivers working hard to find an opening that would let them out. Voices yelled back and forth. Information was exchanged about the quickest route out of town.

The wailing shriek of tires was a constant soundtrack to the chaos.

Jaws was moving up ahead. Its fat wheels were rolling but the road ahead was clogged with people and cars. The retreat, if that’s what it was, would have to wait for the path to clear if it wanted to pick up real speed.

Rage was boxed in.

Nolan was grinning. His thick, callused fingers strangled the steering wheel.

“Hey Nolan!” Axel yelled. He was in the back with the others. “Bad news. We’ve got company man. You might want to take a look at what’s chasing us.”

Nolan glanced at the rear mirror. There was a swarm of bikers gathering at Goliath’s rear and left side. They caught up quickly, attaching themselves to the silver MBT like a gang of suckerfish to a Great White shark.

“Oh shit,” Eagle Boy cried out. “My nerves can’t take much more of this. We should never have got on this damn bus. We were supposed to be trying to get away from trouble, not running straight towards it.”

Axel and the Retaliators hurried down to the driver’s cabin.

“What the hell do we do Nolan?” Cowboy Samurai asked, his haunted face leaning over the cabin door. “They’ve got us surrounded. What do we do?”

Nolan checked the mirror again. The bikers were slowing down, most of them falling back towards Goliath’s rear end. This maneuver was executed gracefully and almost beautifully, like a flock of birds dancing in mid-air. It was as if a signal had been given to convene at the rear.

On a clear stretch of road Nolan would have hit the gas and started bumping them off their bikes. He didn’t have a clear stretch of road. Another option was to shoot them but the street was still too busy, especially with women and children. The guns would have to wait.

He watched them in the mirror.

“They’re going for the ladder,” he said.

“What ladder?” Typhoon asked.

“There’s a ladder at the back of Goliath,” Nolan said. It’s used for quick and easy transportation to the roof and I’ll bet my life that’s what they’re thinking about right now. Getting onto the roof. That’s their Plan A.”

“Well that’s no biggie,” Cowboy Samurai said. It was the first time Nolan had seen the man look hopeful about a dangerous situation. “They can’t get in from the roof can they? As long as we stay inside Goliath they can’t touch us, right?”

“Not quite Cowboy,” Nolan said. “There’s a sunroof up there, just like there was in Kong. All the MBTs have a sunroof. And to tell you folks the truth I don’t know if it’s open or closed. And if it is closed I don’t know if it’s locked. I wasn’t exactly paying attention when I put Diesel upstairs earlier.”

“You mean they can get in?” Cowboy Samurai asked.

“If it’s open?” Nolan said. “Sure they can get in. All they have to do is pull.”

There was a faint thump at the back of Goliath. Then a shrill metallic clang followed by another hefty thwack. Nolan checked the rear mirror and saw the shadowy outline of a riderless Harley lying on the ground, its gleaming chrome gas tank fading into the night.

“They’re dropping their bikes,” Nolan said. “It’s on. They’re going for the roof.”

There were more thuds at the back. One-two-three, they just kept on coming.

“Oh shit!” Cowboy Samurai said, hands clamped over his Stetson. “That’s it, we’re fucked. Stop the bus Nolan – we can at least make a run for it.”

Nolan glanced over his shoulder at Viking Chick. As usual she’d wrapped the cloak tight around her body to conceal the bump. Her worried eyes skipped back and forth between Nolan and the roof.

“What do we do?” she whispered.

Nolan gestured to Eagle Boy. “Can you drive?”

“Sure,” Eagle Boy said. “I can drive anything.”

“I need you to take the wheel,” Nolan said. “All you have to do is follow Jaws. Nice and easy bird shit, hold her steady. Don’t let that bus out of your sight and try not to kill anyone on the road. They’re running around like headless chickens out there.”

“Got it,” Eagle Boy said. “And Nolan for Christ’s sake, my name’s not bird shit it’s…”

“Later,” Nolan said, standing up. “C’mon, take the wheel.”

Nolan tapped the brake, bringing Goliath to a steady halt. He could feel those hairy biker bastards on the roof. Fortunately they could only climb the ladder one man at a time, which would slow them down a little, but when they had enough bodies on board that’s when they’d go for the sunroof.

Eagle Boy and Nolan quickly swapped places.

“Just treat it like a regular car,” Nolan said, watching as Eagle Boy got to grips with Goliath. They started moving again at a crawl. “Good man. Keep your foot on the gas and let the machinery do the rest.”

Yep,” Eagle Boy said, his giant bird wings flattened out against the seat. He pushed the beak cap skywards, allowing him a better view of the road. “Got it.”

Nolan glanced towards the roof. They didn’t have long.

“What about this weapons dash?” Eagle Boy asked.

Nolan shook his head. “Hopefully you won’t need to figure that out. Either way I don’t have time to explain.”

“I’ve driven tanks before as research,” Eagle Boy said. “I reckon I can do this.”

“Just drive for now man,” Nolan said.

“Okay.”

He turned towards Axel and the rest of the Retaliators, all huddled in the aisle like children in the middle of a fire drill, waiting for instructions from an adult on what to do next.

“Just stay here and sit it out,” Nolan said. Then he pointed at Typhoon. “Except you ninja. I need you to come with me.”

Typhoon looked like he’d swallowed a wasp. “Me?”

“Yeah you,” Nolan said. “I’m going on the roof and I need someone to lock the sunroof door behind me. Pull the twin bolts, top and bottom, and secure Goliath. No one’s getting in here after that? Not without your say so. Got it?”

“Yeah,” Typhoon said.

Nolan hurried towards the stairs but Axel cut him off in midstride.

“You’re taking them on alone?” the boy said, looking outraged. “Uh-uh Nolan. I’m coming with you man. Strength in numbers. Now I might be a skinny little kid but I’m fast and I’ve seen all your UFC fights.”

Nolan smiled and tapped Axel on the shoulder.

“Axel,” he said. “I need you to do something important for me down here. Your job is to take care of Viking Chick? For the love of God little man, don’t let anything happen to her or the bump. You hear me?”

Axel’s mouth moved as if to speak but nothing came out. No words, no sound.

“Can you do that for me?” Nolan said. “Take care of her?”

Axel sighed. “Yeah.”

“Good boy.”

Nolan signaled to Typhoon. “Let’s go man.”

They hurried to the upper deck. The second floor apartment on Goliath had the same retro décor as downstairs, plus the same number of bedrooms and a bathroom. There was a prop wardrobe beside the top of the stairs and that was Nolan’s first stop. He ran over and pulled the double doors open. His eyes roamed across a variety of gruesome weapons – a steel chain, a dagger and a Taser of some kind. But it was the spiked baseball bat hanging off the back of the door that he reached for. He’d used this weapon in Goliath many times. It was light and fast and best of all, those were real razor sharp spikes attached to its wooden head.

A barrage of footsteps thundered across the roof.

“They’re coming,” Typhoon said. “Nolan they’re heading for the sunroof now.”

Nolan pulled out the H&K pistol tucked into his waist. Another souvenir from Kong and one that was about to prove useful.

“Lock the door after me,” he said, running over to the ladder. “Slide the bolts and you’re safe.”

“Yeah.”

Nolan tucked the bat under his arm, taking care to avoid the spiked head. With his spare hand he gripped the wooden rungs of the ladder and climbed quickly up to the roof.

He trained the H&K barrel on the sunroof.

The sunroof door was closed the bolts weren’t fastened. Those bastards could have gotten in if they’d been a touch quicker on the ladder.

Footsteps came closer.

Nolan could hear them now, whispering in low urgent voices. How many were up there? Nolan had visions of a small biker army waiting on the other side of the roof. Fucking pirates.

He took a deep breath. Squeezed the H&K grip and then placed his finger over the trigger.

A click.

Somebody pulled the door open.

A fat, leering face appeared in the gap, inches away from the barrel of Nolan’s pistol. It was the face of a greasy-haired biker with a shit-eating grin, his gappy teeth on display. Nolan could even smell the man’s breath and it smelled like the wrong end of a sewer rat.

The smug grin vanished when the biker saw the H&K in Nolan’s hand.

“Hi,” Nolan said.

He squeezed the trigger and there was a loud cracking noise. The greaser fell backwards with a shriek. There was an explosion of male voices on the roof – pissed, confused and very loud. But he’d rattled them. Nolan took advantage of that split second of confusion to barge his way onto Goliath’s roof, which he did in record time.

“Shut the door,” he called out behind him. “Now.” He flipped the lid back over, certain that Typhoon would double bolt it from the inside.

Nolan straightened up and loosened his arms to get the blood flowing. He walked towards them, H&K in one hand and the spiked bat in the other. There were about fifteen greasers standing on the roof, momentarily stunned by the sudden, brutal death of their brother.

“Sorry about that,” Nolan said, glancing at the fresh stiff spread-eagled on the roof. He hadn’t had much of a face in life but at least he’d had a face. Not so much now.

Nolan assessed what was in front of him. There were some big, ugly guys up there on the roof and first impressions told him they were capable with their fists. Swollen, tanned muscles bulged out of sleeveless denims. Mean, pitiless faces glared at Nolan. There were a few switchblades on display too, a handful of pistols and one double barrel shotgun.

Behind the slow-moving Goliath, Nolan saw a trail of toppled Harleys, like white foam lagging behind a speedboat.

“The Grim Lords,” Nolan said, reading the club name off their patches. “That’s not bad.”

“President Rage wants to talk to you,” one of the bikers said, speaking through clenched teeth. The speaker was a squat guy who reminded Nolan of a chunkier, meaner-looking version of Willie Nelson. Braids, headband and all. “That’s the only reason you’re not dead now.”

“So you guys work for Rage now?” Nolan said. “What the hell happened to the Grim Lords I wonder? Were you guys always so easy to buy and sell?”

“Watch your mouth mister,” Willie Nelson said. “Just because we have to take you in alive don’t mean we can’t take you in fucked up.”

“Never thought I’d see the day a legit MC like the Grim Lords would sell out to a crooked politician,” Nolan said in a taunting voice. “What happened boys? Did you get scared tonight?”

He laughed as hard as he could.

A curly haired greaser charged at Nolan like an angry bull. He had a switchblade in hand, sharp and gleaming, ready to cut.

“Sammy!” Willie Nelson cried out. “Stop! We need him al…”

But Sammy didn’t stop.

Nolan fired the H&K, taking out Sammy and three other Lords. Boom, down they went. All three in the blink of an eye.

Willie Nelson’s eyes bulged in horror as he stared down at his dead buddies. “What the fuck are…?”

Nolan tucked the pistol back into the waist of his jeans. “Let’s not waste precious time on a gunfight,” he said. “After what I just did, shooting’s far too good for me right? You boys should really carve me up a little first.”

He wrapped both hands around the handle of the spiked bat.

“Here I am.”

Nolan had no intention of killing too many of these road pirates. They were going to take him straight to Rage after all. Express delivery. And they wouldn’t kill him, not even after what he’d done to their buddies. They had their orders to take him to Rage. Nolan hoped they’d stick to them.

“C’mon,” he said.

A shaven-headed Lord charged at Nolan with a dagger. The brute was strong but clumsy. Nolan neatly sidestepped the attack. The man thrust the dagger at Nolan’s heart but Nolan kept his distance then moved in and threw a spear tip of an elbow, rattling the man’s brain cells and sending them into orbit.

Nolan dispatched a few more of the Grim Lords with equal precision. Hard rights to the chin, a flying knee – he was having fun out there. And all the while he hoped that the Lords wouldn’t switch tactics, say what the hell and shoot him.

Eventually however, it was time to reel it in. They would shoot him if he kept this up and besides, Nolan knew he couldn’t stand in front of Rage at full strength. He was going to have to suck up a little damage.

He lowered his hands, faking exhaustion.

Someone clubbed Nolan on the back of the head with a pistol butt. Nolan winced, then spun around. But he didn’t throw anything back. He took a hard shot to the jaw from a lanky, wild-eyed biker with a handlebar mustache. The man’s blows were flimsy but he was fast with whip-like arms that were never in the same place for more than a second. Another shot to the ribs and Nolan went down.

“Take that you motherfucker,” the lanky greaser said.

They rushed at Nolan while he was down, unleashing a barrage of vicious kicks to the body. They cursed, calling him every name under the sun. Every syllable of every insult was accompanied by a kick. Nolan lay there, covering up on the ground. Every blow was more painful than the last but he didn’t try to get back to his feet. For a while he thought the Grim Lords had abandoned their orders to bring him back alive and were actually going to beat him to death.

Finally the attack stopped.

Nolan groaned in agony and fell onto his back. Looking up he saw the Grim Lords standing over him like messengers from the underworld who’d come to collect his soul. Their beetroot red faces spewed fury and exhaustion. And of course hatred.

Someone kicked him on the ribs. One last shot for the road.

Nolan winced but he ate the blow, imagining all the while that his body was a giant sponge.

“This motherfucker killed Benji,” Willie Nelson said. “He killed Lonnie, Hammer Joe, Sammy and Doug. What do you think boys? He shot them like a dog. I say to hell with Rage and let’s dispatch our own form of justice on this mother. What do you say? The Grim Lords answer to no one.”

Shot them like a dog, Nolan thought. Poor choice of words.

“Don’t kill him Jem,” another Lord said. This guy’s voice was comparatively calmer than Willie Nelson’s voice. “Eddie calls the shots and Eddie says Rage wants this killer alive. We off him and we’re in deep shit.”

Willie Nelson made a fierce, hissing noise. “Well what about the people inside the bus?” he said. “Are we going after them or what?”

He leered at Nolan with batshit crazy eyes.

“We’re gonna kill your friends motherfucker. Gonna make you watch too when I eat them up one by one.”

Willie Nelson rubbed his belly hard.

A pause.

“They’ve locked the door,” a voice in the distance said. “Sunroof’s locked from the inside. That thing’s solid. Can’t get in, not from up here.”

“Don’t worry about them now,” the man who’d stopped Willie Nelson said. “We’ll come back for the bus and for them – this silver baby’s ours for the taking – it belongs to the Grim Lords. As for now, we deliver this guy to Rage because we’re men of our word. Right?”

Willie Nelson backed off, a cloud of hate pouring off his head like steam. Slowly he began to nod.

“Muscles,” he said. “Pick him up will you? We don’t want to keep the Prez waiting.”

Chapter 14

A battered and bleeding Nolan was escorted from Goliath to Jaws.

On his way Nolan was forced to watch Goliath come under attack from the Grim Lords. Those who weren’t escorting Nolan to Jaws had turned into feral men with firearms – they surrounded the MBT, shooting at the glass, slamming their hands against the door and using their switchblades to slash the tires. Nolan didn’t know if they were genuinely trying to disable Goliath or whether they were doing what they were doing to intimidate Axel and the Retaliators into surrendering.

As Nolan was dragged towards Jaws he heard Goliath’s engine fire into life at his back. Moments later the silver MBT was in the midst of a hasty reverse, a wounded animal fleeing the attack of the mad bikers.

“Go,” Nolan said under his breath.

Goliath raced towards the nearest side street, forcing a few remaining stragglers to dive out of the way. The Grim Lords who’d laid siege to Goliath jumped onto their Harleys and followed their prey, zooming off Hollywood Boulevard at a high speed. Tires squealed and sparks flew against a dark backdrop.

Nolan was thinking about Diesel lying in the upper deck bedroom. He was at least thankful that Axel and Viking Chick were there with him. They’d take care of him, do what was right.

“Get in there you big bastard,” one of the Lords snapped.

Nolan was pushed up the ramp and he staggered clumsily onto Jaws.

Rage was waiting for him on the yellow brick road. His hands were clasped behind his back and he was smiling as Nolan entered the bus. The President’s tailor made suit was immaculate, just as it had been at the Paramount party earlier that evening.

Nolan’s hands curled into fists. He could feel his blood boiling just looking at the bastard.

Blaze and a squad of SS monkeys formed a neat triangle formation at the boss’s back. The light was dim and the people inside Jaws were reduced to grainy, featureless shadows

The Grim Lords who’s transported Nolan stayed by the door. They’d taken both his H&K and the spiked bat.

“Hello again Mr. Nolan,” Rage said. “That’s a nice costume you’re wearing. Strangely appropriate considering what’s happened tonight.”

“Thanks,” Nolan said.

The President pulled a handkerchief out of his breast pocket. He offered it to Nolan.

“You’ve got blood on your face,” he said.

Nolan lowered his bandana. He almost wretched as the scent of whiskey and stale smoke shot up his nose.

“Jesus,” he said, lifting his bandana up again. “Must have been quite a party in here while the world burned.”

He took the handkerchief off Rage and dabbed at a small cut under his left eye. As he did so Nolan made out the shape of two people sitting in the back apartment. It was too dark to make out much but Nolan thought it looked like two women. They were leaning their heads out of the furthest booth like two eavesdroppers, no doubt trying to listen in on what was happening elsewhere.

One of the bikers – an older man with a skull tattoo on his neck – climbed aboard Jaws, barging his way past Nolan. He took his place with the President’s inner circle.

Nolan saw Blaze give this man a poisonous stare. Like he was a cockroach crawling over his kid’s first birthday cake.

The biker leaned closer to Rage and spoke in a gruff, quiet voice. “He wouldn’t come quietly Mr. President sir so my brothers had to persuade him and they did so, but at great cost.”

“I won’t forget it Eddie,” Rage said, keeping his eyes on Nolan as he spoke. “When the time comes you’ll be heavily rewarded. That’s a promise.”

Eddie nodded. “Uh-huh.” His hateful eyes turned back to the prisoner.

“Why am I here?” Nolan asked, dropping the bloody handkerchief on the floor.

Rage’s eyebrows stood up. “You mean you didn’t come all this way to vote Mr. Nolan?”

“Not quite.”

“I’m hurt,” Rage said. “Then tell me Mr. Nolan, if you didn’t come here to vote then why did you? Hmm? You’ve cost me a lot of trouble tonight. You know that don’t you? The voters that we worked so hard to gather here have run off because of you. My election is now in jeopardy, which means the future of this country is in jeopardy. And…”

“I came here to kill you,” Nolan said. “But you already know that.”

As he spoke, Nolan heard Diesel’s final shriek of pain. He saw a dark shape lying in a puddle of blood in the Paramount parking lot and as Nolan’s mind’s eye got closer he saw that Diesel wasn’t the only one there. Vicki was in that dark pool too, shards of windshield glass sticking out of her bloody face.

Nolan saw Malcolm Campbell sitting beside a picket fence, calling for backup.

Rage dabbed at something on his shirtsleeve. A bloodstain. “Oh yes,” he said. “I shot your dog didn’t I? So it died?”

Nolan’s stomach lurched.

“So that’s why you came after me?” Rage asked, his eyes narrowing. “Because I shot your dog?”

“Bingo.”

“Your loyalty is impressive Mr. Nolan,” Rage said, backing off a few paces towards his people. “Hmmm…I have a feeling about you. I have a feeling that you’re a very capable man and that the reason Jezebeth Black isn’t here is because she ran into you tonight. Am I right Mr. Nolan? Did you see her on the campaign trail?”

“Yes,” Nolan said.

“Then you did me a favor,” Rage said.

Nolan smirked. “You were going to kill her anyway.”

Rage stepped forward again, hands behind his back. He looked like a man deep in thought.

“I’ll be the first to admit that I wasn’t the best President,” he said. “But that failure of mine applied to a different social context. It applied to that model of society, the one we all know and hate and grew up with. In that model it’s not so much about being a great leader. It’s about looking like a great leader and all the while acting like a fucking saint for the TV cameras. In reality however, saints get crushed. Why doesn’t anyone ever want to admit that Mr. Nolan?”

“Beats me,” Nolan said.

“Look – despite everything I’m still king of the hill. I’m actually thriving. Getting stronger with each passing hour. One of the reasons for my success tonight is that I have an eye for talent. Take Eddie and the Grim Lords here. If I hadn’t seen the potential in working with them they’d be dead. They’d be coyote food in the middle of the road. But I did see that potential and they rewarded me with an influx of ready-made votes. I was right about them and I’m right about you Mr. Nolan. We could do wonderful things together in the new America.”

The biker chief squirmed in the background. What a pity, Nolan thought, that Rage had denied the coyotes.

“I’m very sorry about what happened to your dog,” Rage said, cautiously approaching Nolan. “In Paramount, I was overly concerned with getting my people to safety. I was upset and I acted rashly.”

Nolan’s heart was racing. The President was well within punching range.

One perfectly timed shot…

“Excuse me Mr. President,” Eddie Knox said. “Pardon my ignorant ass for butting in and all but what do you want to do about all those voters that just ran off into the night?”

Rage held a finger in the air.

“You see Mr. Nolan?” he said. “My shepherds are invaluable to me. Get those crowds back here Eddie, do it quickly. Jezebeth might not be coming but my second term will begin with a democratic vote.”

Eddie walked past Nolan towards the door. They eyeballed each other briefly.

“While I go back up on the roof,” Rage said, “I’d like you to think about my offer. About joining us instead of killing us. This is not a time for anger Mr. Nolan. Butch. It’s a time to be smart. It’s a time to stay levelheaded and think about the future and where you see yourself in five years time. I hope it’s with me.”

Rage signaled to a bald-headed SS man at his back.

“Watch him for me Sam. Take him up the back with Rage’s little toy and that Fontaine woman.”

Rage passed Nolan on his way to the stairs. As he walked he wiped at the bloodstain on his shirtsleeve. “If you join me,” he said, stopping at the bottom of the staircase. “I’ll get you a new dog.”

Before Nolan could respond Sam shoved him past Blaze and the SS gorillas and brought him to the lower deck apartment. They approached the fifties-style red and white booth and finally Nolan got a better look at the two eavesdroppers. He saw a thirty or forty-something blonde woman and an auburn haired teenager sitting on the far side of the booth. They were pretending not to be interested as he arrived.

“In there dickhead,” Sam said, nudging Nolan forward with the pistol barrel. “Sit with the girls where you belong.”

Nolan sat opposite the eavesdroppers. Sam went over and parked his ass on the nearby couch, sighing ferociously as he did so like a man who hadn’t sat down in twenty years. Nolan took Sam for classic SS. The guy was even wearing shades at night like some of the other douchebags in Team Rage. And like them, Sam’s facial expression had one gear – dour.

Sam leaned back on the couch, his H&K pointing at Nolan. His eyes blinked slowly as if he wasn’t far from dropping off to sleep.

Nolan turned away, dabbing at a fresh trickle of blood under his nose. He looked at the girl.

“Are you Kasey?”

She frowned.

“What?”

“What are you deaf? Is your name Kasey?”

“Yeah,” she said as if she wasn’t sure. “And you’re Chuck Kowalski right? I mean, your real name is Butch Nolan. Sorry I don’t mean to act weird or fangirl all over you but that costume you’re wearing is rad as fuck man!”

Her eyebrows stood on end. “How do you know my name?”

“Your good buddy Axel,” Nolan said.

Kasey’s jaw dropped. “Axel? He’s alive?”

“He’s alive,” Nolan said. “He’s on Goliath, hopefully a long way away from Hollywood Boulevard. He came looking for you.”

Her eyes filled with tears.

“Axel?”

“Yeah,” Nolan said. “Skinny black kid, right? Dodgers cap. Never shuts up. Never does what he’s told.”

Kasey’s shoulders deflated as if someone had taken a great weight off body and mind. The woman wrapped her arm around the girl and squeezed.

“Great news huh?”

“Yeah,” Kasey said, her eyes glistening. She wiped them dry quickly.

“Are you okay?” the woman asked, taking a closer look at Nolan’s bloody face. “You took a bit of beating, huh?”

“I’m okay,” Nolan said. It was true – he’d taken his beating but was left with little in the way of significant damage. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

She extended her hand across the table. “Shirley Fontaine.”

Nolan shook her hand. “Let me guess. You’re an actress right? Just like everyone else in this town.”

Shirley laughed. “Guilty your honor,” she said. “Guess I should have stayed in Baltimore, waiting on tables in the Dew Drop Diner. Who knows where I’d be now, right?”

“Yeah. At the very least you wouldn’t be here.”

Kasey leaned forward. “So what do we do?” she whispered. “We’ve gotta get out of here. I have to go find Axel and Shirley’s sister is out there somewhere.”

Nolan glanced over at Sam, coughing loud enough to get the big man’s attention.

“Don’t worry about a thing ladies,” Nolan said in a loud, clear voice. “We’ll get out of here. That asshole over there on the couch doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. What’s really going on I mean. If he did, if he saw what was about to happen to him, he’d be running for the hills about now.”

Sam shifted in his seat, a low-pitched growling noise spilling out of him. The H&K moved closer to Nolan.

“Shut up you punch drunk loser,” he said.

Nolan nodded. Then he slowly ran his finger along the table like he was drawing a crude outline of something.

“You ever watch Goliath Sam? It’s a TV show.”

Sam threw his head back, howling with laughter.

“Do I watch Goliath? That piece of garbage? Let me tell you something Nolan – I’d rather swim across piranha-infested waters with a dead fish strapped to my nuts. Jesus Christ. I’m sick of all these fucking zombie shows on TV. Every second show’s a zombie show these days. Zombies, zombies zombies! Who gives a fuck about fucking zombies?”

“Yeah,” Nolan said, leaning back on the couch. “That’s what I thought. So you’ve never watched any of the behind the scenes featurettes they show at the end of every episode? It’s kind of a mini making of documentary.”

“Behind the scenes featurettes?” Kasey said. There was a baffled look on her face. “What are you…?”

“Shut up asshole,” Sam said. “I won’t tell you again.”

“Yeah sure,” Nolan said. “I was just saying though that the featurettes give you an inside look at everything to do with the show. And the reason I’m saying it is that they go inside the MBTs too, show you around these luxury apartments, one of which we’re sitting in right now. You probably thought the inside of Jaws was as sparse as it looks in the show? Right Sam?”

“I did,” Kasey said.

Sam shifted uncomfortably again. It was as if the teeth of his underwear were snapping at his balls.

“If you watched the featurettes,” Nolan said, “you’d know all about the hidden compartments in here. I mean, they’re literally everywhere. Weapons compartments with AK-47s, M16s, grenades, knives and a lot more. It’s for the show but the weapons we use are real. You knew that right?”

Nolan was grinning underneath the bandana. “We’re surrounded by hidden guns.”

But Sam just shook his head and fell backwards against the couch. “You’re so full of shit. You think if this dumb fucking bus was loaded with weapons we wouldn’t have found them by now? You even know who we are? What we do?”

“Guns Sam,” Nolan said, almost whispering this time. “Guns everywhere.”

“Pipe down asshole!” Sam barked. He half-stood up and pointed the H&K at Nolan. “Pipe down.”

“Sure thing,” Nolan said, hands in the air.

“And stop talking,” Sam said. “Stop talking about hidden weapons and…just stop talking. Period. You’re getting on my nerves.”

“Well you know something Sam?” Nolan said, lowering his hands. “You’d be absolutely right one thing.”

“What’s that?”

Outside, Nolan heard a familiar sound in the distance. A diesel turbine engine in full flow – the sweet music of something big getting closer. A pair of headlights, two brilliant white eyes in the dark, crawled down one of the side streets. The lights were expanding, gliding at speed towards Hollywood Boulevard.

“What?” Sam said. “What am I right about dummy?”

Nolan slowly reached a hand under the table. “The guns Sam,” Nolan said. “All that stuff about the guns – I just made it up.”

“Surprise surprise,” Sam grunted.

“But you know what Sam?”

“For Christ’s sake. What dickhead?”

The beast was getting closer.

“There might not be any AK-47s lying around,” Nolan said. “But there are hidden weapons here.”

“What the…?”

Nolan pulled the metal catch under the table towards him. There was a sharp click and in the blink of an eye he flipped the booth table open as if he was lifting up the lid of a giant toolbox. Inside the table there was a tray of kitchen utensils and cutlery.

There were also some Kunai throwing knives in there. Props from Goliath.

Nolan’s hand lunged towards the nearest Kunai and he picked it up by the blade, raising it towards his shoulder.

“What the fuck?” Sam yelled, jumping to his feet.

But he was too slow.

Nolan leapt out of the booth, taking two steps forward. His fingers pinched down on the blade. Then he threw straight over the top of his shoulder with all his strength. There was no time to work out distance and rotation like he did when practicing for the show – this was a Hail Mary throw designed to take Sam out before Sam squeezed that trigger.

The blade landed flush. Sam’s eyes bulged in horror as he looked up at the knife lodged in his skull. He spat out a choking noise and then with blank eyes he took a few drunken steps down the aisle before dropping dead.

Nolan saw Goliath racing towards Jaws at full speed. The silver MBT threw itself onto Hollywood Boulevard, the tires squealing as it skidded through a sharp right turn. Then it crossed the street, bulldozing its way through a pack of unmanned Harleys.

There were screams from the upper deck of Jaws.

“What the fuck?” Mickey the driver yelled.

“Hold onto something!” Nolan yelled, looking at Shirley and Kasey. They held onto the table.

Goliath rammed into Jaws and the crunch of impact sent Nolan to the floor. Jaws jerked backwards under the ferocious assault. Wild, high-pitched screaming continued on the upper deck. This was quickly followed by a stampede of people on the stairs, all of them fleeing the sinking ship. They ignored Mickey’s frantic commands to stay put and bolted through the open doors, jumping down onto the street. Within seconds the celebrity cheerleaders were gone, along with most of Rage’s voters.

Outside a pack of about fifteen Grim Lords raced down Hollywood Boulevard towards Goliath.

Nolan smiled as he saw Goliath’s metal limbs move into position. Eagle Boy’s tank practice had paid off after all, at least enough for him to figure out the weapons system.

“Not bad bird shit,” Nolan said, getting back to his feet.

Goliath separated itself from the mangled left side of Jaws. There was a loud crunch during this maneuver, like something big and angry was digging its way out from under the asphalt surface and making its way angrily towards daylight.

Kasey ran over to the window and pointed outside.

“Holy shit!” she said. “Look. It’s the Retaliators! They’re in Goliath. I can see Eagle Boy, Typhoon and Cowboy Samurai at the front.”

The guns of Goliath moved slowly, tracking the moving targets that sped along Hollywood Boulevard at full throttle. What followed was an explosion of noise that made Nolan cover his ears. The Grim Lords were cut to shreds. They were sitting ducks on Harleys. They fell off their bikes and some of them, in a bid to escape to the line of fire, crashed into one another. Even when they were down and trying to recover their bikes again, Goliath’s rapid-fire guns caught up with them.

Some of the Lords tried to run and didn’t get far.

It was a massacre.

Shirley hurried over to the window and pushed her hands against the glass. “Where’s Lisa? Where’s my sister?”

“Viking Chick,” Kasey said, filling in for Nolan.

Nolan frowned. “Viking Chick? She’s your sister?”

“Yes! Where is she?”

“She was with them on Goliath last time I checked,” Nolan said. “With any luck she’s…”

“YOU BASTARD!”

Mickey the driver staggered out of the driver’s cabin. His haggard face was a bloody mask and his eyes a swirling mess of confusion. He stumbled towards Nolan, a pistol wobbling in his shaky grip.

“You son of a…”

Outside Nolan heard a chilling whirr and click. It was all he needed.

“Down!”

He jumped on Shirley and Kasey, pulling them to the ground.

Seconds later, Jaws’ bulletproof glass came under assault from Goliath. It made for an incredible racket, like a gang of giants throwing stones off the side of the bus. At first the bulletproof glass held but as Goliath came closer it reached breaking point.

Mickey was still on his feet when the glass exploded. As he was shot to pieces by the machine guns he did a silly, jerky dance that might have been called ‘The Electrocution.’ He collapsed onto the floor in a bloody, mangled heap. Arms and legs stretching in all directions.

The shooting stopped.

There was pandemonium inside Jaws after that. As Nolan, Kasey and Shirley lay still on the aisle they heard the SS thundering downstairs, dozens of different voices barking different instructions and information all at once. Everyone spoke in clipped, panicky tones.

“Left gun destroyed!”

“Right one out of range. We’ve got no firepower.”

“Grenades!”

“Can’t. Mickey’s dead.”

“We can’t win a standoff either.”

“Charge them. Take cover behind the bodies and bikes and work your way towards that damn bus. Seize it! Seize it for the good of everyone!”

“For the President!”

“For the President!”

The SS made their last stand, throwing themselves outside in a bid to claim Goliath. The shooting started immediately, both from Rage’s troops and the silver MBT, which had reversed about ten meters after obliterating the bulletproof glass.

Nolan crawled over the glass fragments and grabbed Sam’s pistol off the floor. His hands were peppered with fresh cuts.

“Stay down,” he said, glancing back at Shirley and Kasey. “Whatever you do keep your heads down and wait.”

They nodded.

Nolan crept down the aisle. He saw the winding staircase up ahead, covered in shards of broken glass. His eyes followed the steps, all the way to the upper deck and beyond that to the roof. Rage hadn’t come down for the last stand and neither had Blaze. They were still up there.

Nolan smiled.

This was what he’d been waiting for.

Chapter 15

Nolan stopped by the door before going upstairs.

He looked outside.

The SS were making a valiant last stand on Hollywood Boulevard, trying to bring down Goliath. They worked tirelessly with what remained of the Grim Lords, unloading their combined firepower at the silver MBT. They were trying to get close, shooting in spurts and then inching towards the next available cover.

Goliath maintained the same pattern of resistance throughout the battle. Eagle Boy would reverse the MBT a few feet along the road before spraying another round of machine gun fire. The SS and Grim Lords frantically tried to shield themselves behind a mess of toppled motorcycles and dead comrades piled on top of one another, several bodies high. But the cover was mostly ineffective. Goliath’s twin barrels were too strong and they were annihilating Rage’s new army in its infancy.

The screams of the SS and the Grim Lords were squashed under the sheer volume of Goliath’s guns.

Nolan stood there, devouring every last bloody detail. It was like watching a giant water hose spraying ants off the garden path.

He smiled. Maybe the Retaliators weren’t so useless after all.

Nolan picked up the dead driver’s pistol at his feet. Now he had two guns – a Glock and an H&K.

He walked towards the stairs.

Unable to control himself, Nolan charged up the winding staircase. Each step sounded like a clap of thunder inside Jaws. About halfway up Nolan heard a galloping noise coming from the upper deck. He looked up and one of the SS men appeared at the top of the stairs. The man’s cold, chiseled features glared down at Nolan, his eyes spilling over with hate. No doubt he’d seen what was going on outside too.

“Got you,” the man said.

He was carrying an AR-57 and its spit-polished barrel turned on Nolan. But Nolan’s reflexes were faster than the SS man’s trigger finger. Nolan flipped the Glock and there was a loud, whip-like crack as he put a bullet in the SS man’s heart. He put one in the belly too for good measure. The SS man grunted, then toppled backwards, dead before he hit the floor.

Nolan hurried upstairs. He heard a whistling noise as a bullet whizzed inches past his head.

“Fuck,” he hissed, retreating halfway down the stairs. Twice now his reckless charge had almost cost him everything.

Get it into your skull idiot. The SS aren’t quite done yet.

He crept back upstairs slowly this time and peered over the edge of the staircase. A woman, dressed in a black suit with spiky platinum blonde hair, was marching across the upper deck with a loose, carefree swagger. Her feet were silent as they touched the ground, as if the woman was made of air.

This strange act of bravado, walking towards Nolan like this, suggested that the woman thought she’d nailed him good. But when she saw him peeking out, a look of shock registered on her face.

“Bastard!” she yelled.

Nolan put two in her chest before she could even think about taking cover. She dropped to her knees and fell flat on her face with a bouncing thud.

“Sleep tight,” Nolan growled.

He began to walk towards the ladder in the center of the room.

Before he could get far the woman on the floor suddenly came back from the dead. Her body jerked as if in the grip of a violent seizure. She lifted her head up, exposing a purple-red face that looked ripe to burst. Then she began crawling across the floor, leaving a trail of sludge blood in her wake.

“Motherfucking…I’ll kill you…”

Her fingers reached for a weapon that wasn’t there.

Nolan grimaced. With a sigh he went over and shot the woman in the head. He gave her a soft kick on the side – this time is was over for real.

After that Nolan swung both pistols left and right, waiting for any more SS to crawl out of the woodwork.

None came.

Outside, Goliath’s guns had stopped firing. Maybe, Nolan thought, just maybe the SS were finished. And the Grim Lords too with any luck. Neither events would be any great loss to the world – on the contrary, Nolan would chalk that down as a win.

Nolan stopped beside the open sunroof. He tilted his head back and looked up at the night sky. Already it was losing that strange alien brightness that it had sported all evening, which had been enhanced by a thousand raging fires across LA. Soon however, the night sky over Hollywood would be just another endless sheet of black. It would be calm and quiet. Nolan would welcome its return. He no longer felt like drinking beer and watching the world burn.

The real horrors would confront the survivors in the morning. When – if – the sun came up.

Nolan’s hands were shaking. The Kowalski costume felt like an oven inside.

“C’mon,” he said. “This is what you’ve been working for all night.”

He climbed the ladder, gripping each rung like it was a sacred relic.

Nolan emerged onto the roof. He took in a lungful of warm air, which tasted foul. Would that chemical reek ever go away or was that the flavor of Rage’s so-called new America?

“We’ve been expecting you Mr. Nolan,” a familiar voice said.

President Rage and Blaze were two silhouettes standing near the back of the roof. Their features were obscured in the dim light.

Nolan walked towards them, the two pistols lowered at his side.

Blaze immediately stepped forward and positioned himself in front of Rage. There was a pistol in his hand, the barrel pointing at Nolan.

Nolan stopped about halfway across the roof. He glanced briefly to his right and saw Goliath, silent and still in the middle of the road. There was a faint trail of smoke leaking out of both gun barrels. In between the two MBTs, dead bikers, dead SS and a plethora of abandoned Harleys decorated Hollywood Boulevard – it was like a grotesque art exhibition down there with Jackson Pollock drip-style blood on the road.

“The election’s off,” Nolan said. “You’re not the President of anything anymore. Consider what’s about to happen here as your official impeachment.”

Rage’s face remained half-cloaked in the darkness. “Do you know what you’ve done tonight? I mean, do you really know what you’ve done?”

His voice shook with anger.

Blaze lowered his pistol to the side. Then he marched forward, his eyes burning white hot. Nolan guessed Blaze’s cartoonishly thick shoulders were on the brink of bursting through his expensive suit.

“Nolan,” he said. His voice was surprisingly calm. “What do you say we finish what we started at Paramount? Me and you. No weapons, nothing but skin.”

Nolan smiled. “I say yes.”

Blaze tossed his pistol over the side. There was a distant ping as it landed on the street. “I assume you’re not cowardly enough to shoot an unarmed man who offered you a fair challenge?”

“Just a second,” Nolan said.

He narrowed his eyes.

As fast as lightning, Nolan raised the Glock and squeezed the trigger. The bullet whizzed past Blaze, hitting Rage on the right shoulder. Despite the poor visibility on the roof it was a remarkably precise shot on Nolan’s part.

“AAAAGH.

Rage fell onto his backside, a hand immediately pressed tight against the wound. His wide-eyed expression, directed at Nolan, was one of both outrage and shock.

Blaze staggered backwards in horror. The man’s eyes bulged and for a second it looked like he would spontaneously combust. Shooting Rage was apparently worse for Blaze than getting shot himself.

“NOLAN You…”

“What the hell did you shoot me for?” Rage howled. His face was a mask of pure suffering. “Are you crazy? You shot meeeee?”

Nolan spoke in a cold toneless voice.

“That was nothing,” he said. “It was just the start of the longest night of your life. This time your kind won’t get away with it. I swear to God Rage, you’ll be begging me to kill you before the sun comes up.”

The color drained from Rage’s cheeks. His hand was a dam working to halt the blood leaking out of him.

“Blaze,” Rage said, staring at his wound in horror. “Kill that motherfucker. KILL HIM!”

Nolan tossed both guns over the edge of the roof. Then slowly, he started peeling off the Kowalski costume one layer at a time. He removed the helmet, jacket, armor and last of all, the bandana. He tossed everything over the side and it all landed on the street beside the guns.

Blaze watched, his giant body trembling with anger.

Nolan saw Diesel’s blood on his t-shirt. It was fitting that they should see it too. Soon it would be their blood on his clothes.

He held his arms out in invitation.

“Here I am.”

But it was Nolan who charged. He closed the gap in a second, leaping at the Chief-of-Security with his trademark flying knee.

Blaze was big but he was fast too. He deftly sidestepped the attack and as he did so he grabbed a hold of Nolan’s torso, locking his hands together like a wrestler. Blaze stuck his foot out, tripping Nolan up. Both men toppled over and there was a vicious scramble for position on the roof. Nolan found himself on the bottom, trapped under Blaze. It was like lying under a tank and Nolan felt the man’s brute strength pressing down on him, smothering him, squeezing all the air out.

But Blaze wasn’t just raw power. He knew what he was doing in the grappling department. He saw through Nolan’s frequent attempts to lock up an armbar. Every time Nolan shot his legs out in order to trap a limb, Blaze would straighten up, moving arms out of reach. Then he’d come crashing back down with a series of hard punches that Nolan absorbed on his arms, which he used to cover his face.

When Blaze eventually gave him too much room, Nolan scrambled back to his feet.

Both men were breathing hard. Moving a little slower after the grappling exchange.

They faced off, boxing guards held high.

Blaze unleashed a sledgehammer right that grazed Nolan’s chin. He followed it up with a left hook and Nolan felt his skull crack. His legs wobbled.

“Kill him!” Rage yelled over and over again. “Kill him!”

Nolan backed up, allowing his head to clear.

Blaze rushed in, not wanting to give Nolan time to recover. Nolan planted his feet on the ground, stabbing at Blaze’s eyes with a four-fingered spear, which caused the bodyguard to back off.

They stared at each other across the roof.

Nolan’s concentration was temporarily broken by the sound of motorcycles revving down on the street. Then a voice calling up to the roof:

“Mr. President! Down here.”

It was the full-throated growl of Eddie the biker chief. Apparently the Grim Lords weren’t extinct, at least not yet.

“Eddie!” Rage howled. “Where are you? Help me, I’m shot.”

“Climb down the ladder,” Eddie said. “C’mon we need to split before that big silver bitch starts shooting again.”

“No,” Nolan hissed. “No you fucking don’t.”

He watched as Rage began crawling frantically towards the rear of Jaws. Rage left a blackish-red smear in his wake.

Nolan charged forward to intercept Rage’s attempt to run off. He sent a chopping kick to Blaze’s lead leg, a blow that was dodged but knocked Blaze off-balance.

Still, Nolan couldn’t get past the bodyguard. The guy was a fucking wall in between Nolan and Rage. And Rage was getting away.

The two fighters exchanged hard right hands. Both wobbled under the blows but they kept firing regardless, ripping punches to head and body. There was a real sense of urgency in the battle now, at least as far as Nolan was concerned.

Blood spilled from a fresh gash over Blaze’s left eye. The wound impaired his vision, running directly into the eye itself.

Nolan tried to run past Blaze but Blaze rugby-tackled Nolan, dragging him to the ground. Although he fell badly, Blaze managed to secure top position, clamping Nolan to the ground with sheer brute force. But this time when Nolan’s legs shot up in the air Blaze didn’t see it coming. Nolan wrapped his left leg around the back of the man’s meaty neck. Then his right leg hooked over the left, securing the triangle choke.

“Yes,” Nolan growled.

He reached up and grabbed the back of Blaze’s head. With a defiant, exhausted roar Nolan pulled it down into the choke. He squeezed his legs hard and Blaze’s skin turned purple as his body was deprived of oxygen. Rage’s bodyguard made a violent retching noise as if some godforsaken creature trapped inside him was trying to get out.

Nolan glanced towards the other end of the bus. His blood ran cold.

Rage was back on his feet now, standing at the rear of Jaws. One hand still glued to the shoulder.

“Look what you’ve done Nolan,” Rage howled in a pitiful voice. “Look what you’ve done. This was supposed to be so goddamn easy but you…what do you think’s going to happen now? This country will devour itself – it’ll go under and all because of you and your fucking dog!”

The bleeding man wobbled towards the ladder.

“No!”

Nolan squeezed down on the triangle choke, marveling at Blaze’s supernatural ability to cling to consciousness. The Chief-of-Security’s head was an overblown balloon, ready to go pop. But still he wouldn’t go out.

“Go to sleep you fat-headed bastard,” Nolan said, willing the man into oblivion. He threw endless slashing elbows at Blaze’s eyes to make things worse, carving up a face that already looked like it had gone through a tree shredder.

By now Rage was climbing down the rear ladder, wincing with each step. His tanned skin was a ghoulish yellow as his body emptied itself of blood.

Nolan had no choice but to release the triangle choke. He kicked Blaze off him. Blaze gasped and fell flat on the roof, his arms flapping around like an octopus having a seizure.

“RAGE!”

But Rage wasn’t on the roof anymore.

Nolan jumped to his feet and ran over to the ladder. He peered over the edge of the roof and felt his insides turn to ice. Rage was clambering onto the back of Eddie Knox’s Harley, one hand resting on the biker chief’s shoulder. He was talking to Eddie, ranting through clenched teeth and every second word was either bastard or motherfucker.

There was another biker beside Eddie Knox – a longhaired blond with eerily gaunt features. The guy looked like something out of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Were these the last two Grim Lords standing? Eddie Knox and the ghoul?

Rage saw Nolan standing on the edge of Jaws and pointed a finger at him.

“Kill that bastard.”

The blond biker pulled a shotgun from his hard case and aimed it at the roof. Nolan yanked his head back as the man pulled the trigger.

There was a loud crack as the gunshot echoed in his ear. Nolan felt a wave of pressure that momentarily deafened him to everything else.

He backed off, inhaling the acrid odor of gunpowder.

Nolan walked into a thudding sensation at his back. The lights went off and on again. He dropped to his knees and watched the horizon of smoke and fire doing a silly dance in front of him, tilting one way and then the other and then back again, always out of time with the groggy music in Nolan’s head.

He reached for the distant flames.

“Vicki.”

Nolan fell onto his back. The massive, shadowy figure of Blaze stood over him. The giant’s battered face was a mask of blood. Despite extensive wounds, Blaze was grinning and his teeth were stained bright red making him look like something that had walked straight out of Hell. A beast that feasted on the blood of children.

“I’m going to enjoy this,” he said, cracking his knuckles one at a time. “I want you to know that.”

Blaze dropped onto one knee, his hands moving in slow motion towards Nolan’s neck. But for all his will, Blaze’s efforts were labored, his breathing raspy. He’d taken too much damage and his body was shutting down.

Nolan fought Blaze off with clumsy, swatting blows from his back.

“BLAZE!” a voice yelled from below. “C’mon, we need to go. NOW!”

Nolan saw the conflict in the bodyguard’s eyes. Blaze didn’t have the juice to kill Nolan quickly. And he didn’t have a gun either.

“BLAZE!”

The engines revved below, as if joining in the call to hurry up.

Blaze’s eyes burned with anger as he straightened up. He staggered right and left on jelly legs. He turned to walk to the ladder but then with a sudden cry of frustration he crashed down and landed a final, devastating punch on Nolan’s cheek.

Nolan’s head slammed off the roof like a basketball.

Blaze hobbled towards the ladder, walking like an old man.

Nolan spat blood. “Don’t you run out on me.”

With a groan he sat up and pushed himself back to his feet. He promptly fell over again. It took a monumental effort to get upright again but he did it. That last shot had Nolan seeing stars.

“You’re gonna run away from me?” he yelled.

No one answered.

He walked over to the edge of Jaws. The two Harleys at the rear were moving off with Rage and Blaze riding shotgun on both. Both men were drenched in blood.

Nolan saw that the blond biker only had one hand on his handlebar. He was holding onto something else in his other hand – a small turtle shell object that was almost glowing in the dark.

“Fuck!”

Nolan’s heart was galloping.

The blond biker steered around towards the side of Jaws and disappeared from view. Eddie’s Harley quickly followed, although the biker chief set off towards the middle of the road. Once he’d navigated through the sea of corpses, including most of his Grim Lord brothers, Eddie hit the brakes, turning the bike around so that he and Rage were facing Jaws. Both men stared cautiously at Goliath further down the street, wary of those big guns moving.

Nolan heard a voice in the distance. It sounded like Axel.

“Nolan! Run!”

A second later, Eddie’s Harley screamed and took off down Hollywood Boulevard. Nolan saw the badly wounded Rage, barely hanging on at the back. It looked like a life-sized rag doll glued to the seat.

“Don’t you run out on me!”

Nolan held a bloody, tightly clenched fist in the air. His heart sank as the night swallowed his enemy up.

“Nolan! Get out of there!”

Nolan snapped back to life. He sprinted towards the sunroof and practically fell down the ladder. With a shriek of pain, Nolan crash-landed on the upper deck, almost tripping over the bodies of the two dead SS agents he’d killed on his way to the roof.

“Fuck.”

He ran for the stairs, his body working at a fraction of its regular capabilities. Nolan was calling on the reserves for this last gasp effort.

“GET OUT!” he screamed.

He bolted down the winding staircase, jumping the last few steps onto the lower deck.

There was no one there. The girls were already out and the bus was empty except for the two dead men lying on the yellow brick road.

Nolan heard the guttural snarl of a Harley fading into the distance. He glanced down the aisle and saw that little turtle shell globe wobbling back and forth on the yellow brick road.

“NOLAN!”

Nolan leapt through the double doors, landing on the road. He ran with everything, which wasn’t much. He chased after the reversing Goliath, which was putting as much distance between itself and Jaws as possible.

The explosion ripped through the night.

Nolan dropped to the ground. He stayed low to avoid the fragmentation, which he knew went upwards post-blast. Like a worm, he crawled past dozens of corpses on the road, taking shelter behind the wreckage of a blood-splattered Harley-Davidson Roadster.

Nolan felt his face burning up on the right side. Like somebody had dunked his head in a bonfire and held it there.

“We should have stayed in tonight boy,” he groaned. “I’m so, so sorry.”

When he deemed it safe to do so, Nolan sat up, still covering his head in case of any lagging shrapnel. He stared across the road at Jaws. The interior was a smoking wreck, the smoke escaping through the gaping holes where the glass windows had once been.

“Damn it,” he said.

Nolan gingerly touched the side of his face. The skin felt strangely damp. A strange, unpleasant scent lingered in the air. Was it gasoline? Or was it the smell of his face cooking?

He sat there, hands shaking. All the pain in his body, no matter how severe, was secondary to failure.

“Fuck,” he said, punching the road several times.

Light footsteps approached from behind.

When Nolan looked up from behind the Roadster, he saw Eagle Boy, Typhoon and Cowboy Samurai. They were standing over him, carrying the shotguns and semi-automatic rifles that Nolan had taken from Kong. He almost laughed at the sight of them in those ridiculous costumes. But he didn’t, not this time.

Axel was sprinting over with Kasey at his side. Behind them, next to Goliath, Nolan saw Viking Chick and Shirley Fontaine locked in a tight embrace.

Eagle Boy and Typhoon helped Nolan up to his feet.

“Agghhh!” he hollered.

“Jesus,” Typhoon said, staring at Nolan’s face. “Nolan…your face man. We need to get you to a…”

Nolan cut him off by grabbing the Remington shotgun out of Typhoon’s hand. He turned around and limped after the fleeing motorcycles. The bikes were gone but Nolan knew what direction they’d gone. West. Well he could travel west too. All the way to the Pacific coast if he had to.

There was smoke pouring off Nolan’s clothes. His t-shirt was shredded on the right side, exposing numerous cuts on his upper body.

Nolan raised the shotgun and fired. A series of ear-splitting cracks lit up Hollywood Boulevard. With each shot, Nolan pumped the forend like he was trying to break the damn gun.

When the shotgun was empty Nolan dropped it onto the road. He grunted and then reached a hand out to those behind him.

“Give me another gun,” he said. “Now!”

Nothing.

Nolan turned around, which was excruciatingly painful.

The others were still back there, standing in the middle of the road where he’d left them. There was no sense of urgency, no fire in their bellies and most definitely no will to catch up with the fleeing Harleys and their son of a bitch human cargo.

What was wrong with them?

Looking over his shoulder again, Nolan saw that the road was empty apart from a silent horde of parked cars. He thought quickly, running his eyes over those abandoned vehicles. There were no other people on the street. All the voters had gone. Gone where? Were there still homes to go to?

Nolan soaked up the emptiness. It was like standing amidst the ghostly aftermath of a stadium after a big concert.

As the adrenaline wore off he felt the pain intensifying. It was everywhere, literally everywhere in his body, but his face was the most troubling of all his wounds. He wondered what hospitals were intact in the region. There was SCH at Hollywood. He’d try there first.

There was also something else he had to do.

Nolan staggered his way back towards Goliath. Viking Chick and Shirley Fontaine approached him first, walking side by side, a look of concern on their faces.

Axel and Kasey were behind them, stuck together like Siamese twins. Their relief at being reunited was palpable.

The three male Retaliators meanwhile, were celebrating further back. They were acting like they’d survived the sinking of the Titanic. And Nolan understood – he truly did. The fight was over for these people. It hadn’t been about revenge for them and it never would be. It was about surviving and being reunited with loved ones and that sort of thing. Friends and family. Nolan was selfish for thinking it had ever been about anything else.

“Nolan,” Axel said. “You’re hurt man. How bad is it?”

“I’ll live,” Nolan croaked.

“You saved us,” Viking Chick said, taking his hand and squeezing softly. Even that hurt. She smiled although it was clear that Nolan’s facial wound bothered her. “You did that Nolan. And you helped me find my sister. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Nolan said. He looked at Eagle Boy. “Didn’t take you long to figure Goliath out did it? Good shooting man. Now all you need is a decent costume and you’re all set to go.”

Eagle Boy smiled. “Thanks.”

Nolan nodded. “No problem bird shit.”

“Nolan,” Viking Chick said, letting go of his hand. “We need to take care of that wound – that’s an open burn and it’s at risk of infection. We can’t just leave something like that.”

Nolan shook his head.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he said. “You guys are going to take Goliath and get the hell out of Hollywood. Tonight. This thing – it’s big and I don’t know if there’s any coming back from it. If it’s like this everywhere else…who knows? Thing is it ain’t even the bombs that’ll do it in the end. That was just the equivalent of a starter pistol. It’s us, down here on the ground. That’s the big worry.”

Nolan stared down the empty road.

“Axel.”

“Yeah?”

“If you get a chance,” Nolan said. “Go check on your mother.”

With that Nolan limped over to Goliath, leaving the others standing in the street behind him. His first stop was on the upper deck where he approached the nearest bedroom. He stood in front of the door, his bloody hand lingering over the metal handle. Then, wincing at a fresh jolt of pain in his face, he pushed the door open and walked into the dark bedroom. The air was stale and warm. Despite this the bedroom was the most peaceful space that Nolan had encountered all night. It felt like walking out of a battlefield into the quiet calm of a church.

He flicked the light switch on.

For a while he stood in the open doorway, staring at the blanket with Diesel’s body wrapped inside.

“I blew it pal,” Nolan said. “But it ain’t over.”

He limped over to the bed, picked up his dog and felt a terrible emptiness in that familiar old weight. He brought the bloody blanket close to his face.

“You can’t come with me,” he said. “Not this time old buddy. We’re going to put you somewhere quiet and let you sleep.”

He hobbled downstairs with Diesel in his arms. When he walked outside the Retaliators, Axel, Kasey and Shirley, were in deep discussion about something. They fell silent when Nolan walked out with the bundle.

They watched him walk past. Nolan felt their eyes all over him, but he didn’t stop.

He went over to a gray Jeep Cherokee at the side of the road. The driver’s door was lying wide open, which suggested the vehicle had been abandoned in a hurry. With any luck the keys would still be right there in the ignition. A full tank of gas would be a nice bonus.

“Nolan,” Axel called out. “What are you doing man? Where are you going?”

Nolan reached the Cherokee and took a look inside. Nice and clean – the interior smelled brand new. Somebody had loved this car. Best of all, the key was right there at the end of a long silver chain dangling out of the ignition. A half tank of gas – that would do.

He put Diesel in the backseat. At the same time, Nolan noticed a few toys lying on the floor, trapped in the space between the passenger seat and the back. He saw a spelling game, a cuddly bear, and a miniature-racing car still in the box. There was some kind of pink gadget that resembled a kid’s iPad poking out of the map pocket.

Nolan shook his head. He gave Diesel’s blanket a pat and then walked back over to Goliath.

The others, perhaps sensing the futility of questions, allowed him to pass without interruption.

Nolan went upstairs to the prop wardrobe. He opened it up and grabbed a steel head shovel and a small dagger – a dagger that was always strapped to Chuck Kowalski’s leg in Goliath. It was perfect for carving an inscription.

With tools in hand, Nolan stepped back outside. He was breathing heavy and the pain almost certainly building to an excruciating crescendo.

This time he stopped beside the others for a second. He offered them a pained smile – it was the best he could do. Slowly, Nolan approached Viking Chick and gently placed a hand on her bump. He held it there and felt life inside.

She smiled and mouthed the words ‘thank you’.

“Good luck,” he said, turning towards the road again.

Then Nolan limped away and though he heard them calling after him, nobody followed.

The End

After the End Trilogy (Complete Box Set)

After the End Trilogy

The Curse (After the End #1)

The Sinners (After the End #2)

The End War (After the End #3)

Complete Box Set

“A post-apocalyptic New York run by women…what could go wrong?

Margaret Atwood would be proud.”

‘Civic terror, apocalypse, gangs, horror, complete decline of civilization…read it and weep!’ - Mallory A. Haws

The Future of London (Books 1-5)

The Future of London

L-2011 (Future of London #1)

Mr Apocalypse (Future of London #2)

Ghosts of London (Future of London #3)

Sleeping Giants (Future of London #4)

Kojiro vs. The Vampire People (Future of London #5)

The Future of London Box Set (Books 1-3)

The Future of London Box Set (Books 1-5)

“Modern dystopian at its very best.” - Kirsten McKenzie, author of Painted.

The Exterminators Trilogy - ‘You’ll Never Take Sunlight for Granted Again.’

The Exterminators Trilogy

Black Storm

(The Exterminators #1)

Black Fever

(The Exterminators #2)

Black Earth

(The Exterminators #3)

“Part-horror, part post-apocalypse…all brilliant.”

Dystopiaville

Is this fiction? Or is it the future?

Shut Up and Die! - Season 1, Episode 1

WaxWorld - Season 1, Episode 2

‘So many twists and turns it feels like you are on a rollercoaster ride that is not safe at all.’

GrimLog (Tales of Terror)

Apex Predators

Air Nosferatu

“What’s not to like about zombies and sharks, or zombie sharks?” - CJ (5 stars)

“Brilliantly fast-paced horror that was unputdownable.” - Chantelle Atkins (5 stars)

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